
%; o 5 / % 

V * » • O, *>> 

> A, * a* A"J 

*$* &? «• <mWA° ^ <A * 
t ^ ■ r * °o» v ° 

° o 

* V <$> ° 


° " 0 ° 



\V 

. V k * * * 0.' *\ 

& * jA^6^/Vi*° <A * 

° a .• 

A & *+ *. „ ^ 

A <* *Qm l* 


4 o 


^ v* 

o Or , o 

> \ * *Jf v» ^fL^llt^sSs. ^ O y? 

'* rv Ay \\^ % \V 

* ' ' A 0 $> +ono° w 

.0 >»*'% *> V N , 

* A - 0 & a * A* *£. v 

__. w » 

* /• I *» ^SoOOsSt^^OA x 

v^** J 

<*'•’• ‘ * * Jp A.*'.-.,- s 

*-- r, . ^r<s^ «♦ o ^ t „ +p 

</> *** *• JMi ? * -6 

* Q> » « VA r\> 



o* ,°" °.„ O, 

■ •-^-', o <, 

* '’o v* : 

r ' *° * 

F ^ r\ a* * wwwy * x r 

o. >.T,-’ ,0- V AA' ,A 

a? *!ALa > V N * * • 

- A* *ydfefc'. ^ aA / ~ 

V^ v 





• -<u 

\ A » t « o 

* V* a ; 

*$* S-V ♦ ffCOgg/H,° <A * 




v ^,. - A '-. 

<* "° 3# ^ 

O 






y*\ 


} 4 ' 

*by 


'> . ^ ’A 10 %^j|\N?^O v . 0 <j5 ///////ms 

* o « 0 «$> °*U * • •' * ^ 

a° O v % ^ d c> sy % s* 

a y$> A? ♦ ‘ ° <A * 

V<^ v •; ° 6 

c a^^j. /»s ^ 

A % ^ ^ •„ 

a A A 'o « ^ Cr v ^T e ’ /, 

jA t » t '®i> ^ .0' c° Wo ^ *4^ , t • b v ^ 

1 G ^ Str/mZ' % 

‘ ^ !// ^ * y 4 







'•”'A 0 V* 

a° Avi'* > 


* 


'• ^ ^ . 

0 A«<> * 


* ^rv 

* <£* • 


O 

^-V o _ M/ ^ xvr 

> *Fg%WS A, ^ 

1 Q * c 0 W ° 

W 0 * ^ o jt> 



tj> v O V o ' «,' 

v > V 

% ^ aA / 

: : 

v^ v ** / A ■ 
^ /$y - 

» * * <G o 

A 



c° .“ 

■>. o'* O 

« ^ ’» ov ” : 

r *< A <1 s 9 ^SSS^^///t o ‘.T*. 



^. V * 
: 

a </> ; 

3 ^ «» 


0 w ®♦ ^b A % . v ^ 

° A *‘i»^ ^ 

v* o“ ^ 



16 A ^r, 

^ > _ 4 , / „ 4Wr .. 

A^' C> *^ s * A 

G° V . C J^% ^o t . • # 

* <=Ss^\W* W aN * ae/rfr^' 


/ / f Xs/y \\\v w 

r *4 

^ 4 0 V 
1* 


e • 1 * A 0 

AT 4 »W 




, • c-? r 0, 

r f v J. 0 * 7 ^ » 

*-•’/ V%„;' 0 


.* ^ ^ . 

•* ./ \. 

^ ^ ^ (\^><^ a * ^, A 

- A^ ^ 


<r ° • * * Jy 

\A* % ,0? t° Ho « %) 

^ ~ 0 ^^StiAT. ° 

vx 


4,° xV ° wlS* <^ Gvrk n 

• * * <G^ 

.<X, V i # A Oi ah 


* ^ A oV 































„ ' Jr o . 

° 0 % - 
V . • I * 

° c!" 

° >$* • 


r,\•’ .o' % ' 

JT ,>v- 4 <?• 








« v „ t » « <£. 

I* .W^’- -V . 


■>^ % f o 

V i** • 0 - o. <9 s 5 

t- A (£^ * A*©’ V 

♦ pKX Au ° ^Y* A ♦ 

“ A V 'V O 

** A 

O, *«7Vi* A <7 

*“ 7 * • ’Y f o* «”1° v ^o, 

^ * rr O * cfs5^V>s«, ^ O 

■ K V* 0^ ° A 

* Vlr^'N^. 0 <}5 ^ ’ 

* .0 '•% '">'*X^.‘ .„K o "n 

* • * ° ^ %*••■>' '<5\ 

V f V *°' C\ .0 S 5 *n^% \> \, f 

_ X. Y** ‘ ^ *VSfe'* «S. ^ * 

<A 7r> -* 7^11||iy O .\Vo * <•'9 VP j 

y V» ^5@lKp^* ^ °. 7 

A v Kt ***** A <\ ■'o.f* <Cr c> v * # \ 

0 V c o N e 4 ^ Q V* o t , * <$> 0 ^ q n o ’•/> 

C ° *<T />^>% ^ 4 C ♦ V^SSfot ° <<T < 

" *o K *BMwSa* ^6* 0 < 7 W™Sl* 





^<3* 



*. .-4? *> 


$9 T C^ 


>S» *' .. 


• *£» A ^ 

cy * 
: ^ 9 s « 

; ^ v \ l 

-V^ % 


% 

O A v 

° 4jr * 

h ^b : 

ri> ^ 

^ * ®« 0 A 
^ V v <* y * ° 





. w 

V( ^vr.* / ^ 

'o..»- .d 5- V ♦•'T7T*’ A 

f\> 0^0^ t t a 

v 0 . N " . U ^ A ^ v 

j $ __r^vtV «. ^ ^1 ^ stsp?^ f ,__ 

* <* 
» 4 <**, 



/ " o *f0/jpdr* o v ^ 

0 N ° ' , V > *»<1‘ 

V % cx ^ v **VV, 

^ ^ rK\ Ai° "^Vv A «• 

C <V^. * e . 

** ^ ^ 

/ <A •'O * a * 

* - 1 "- V 0° 



^ ^ rv * 

•’ _A° ^ '» 


o w o 


W v : v< 

* c^'Cn ■* ^wii^ ® A.V^ oWB * 

♦ '^^'4 <a* V ^ ^ 4 <LT *> 

j 'o,a'» a 6^ *^71** A O ^ v ^7'«“s 

QV o w o ^ *^0 ^ v i a aV* © w q _ 

1 ^ c ° A V , c / 



\V <V A 0 ^ 

v # y * o^ jr 

* . * * Ti A*P «- 

^rf(\«»/h, 0 ^rv A * 

,„ p^r,-* Af> «. 

^ ♦$* A -e 

a\ - - - 





* •*+# 

• . 

o * '~ZsfA '■ 

o * a , , * ^ .0 

Y . * o<* cv *0 % 5 

* *£>. a“^ 


W v '^d 

v^v.* / % •. 

-v- .>. ^ jy <y **Z s ^ a *o\\ 

.C- A^SK* ° vr * % i r. 







> 

* ■ ^ v o o 

o n o ' v^r °* * * * •• * -*0 

v *• 

^ A » <J\ U c. 

**<* -M \i 

■ • ,•/\ . 

A <A 


A- V ' 


0> c O « o „ 

C \<^5^w; 


O. 
^o 

+ o 



.. "^7,A ,0* > 

^ s *« , V. 

^ <AV % T.^w' ♦ ** 

7 p & ^Q|M , 

:^?m: y< 

o 98 A 

tf* °y^v^y ^ 

v>. <\ '?.»* .0^ V 

- t * 6 (\> 





# © 


f>4< 






















































120 ° 


140° 


160° 



C ’A R ,0 L 


'N E J $ 

(Japan) • I 


a s 


MARSHALL 

IS. 

(Jap.) 


CELEBES SEA * 


XULl* IS 


P A C 


JAVA SEA 



GILBERT 


- O, 


CERAM 
80UR0 V (Dutch) 

BANDA SEA 


BISMARCK 
ARCHIPELAGO 
9 ( Br.) 


'vAvA^n Batavia to 

*> SUM 8 *W* 


SUNDA or FLORES SEA 


'flores 


sum a a . 

sanoalwooo 




1 Dutchi / 





(fir.) 


• >? timoi (Dutch) 

L-~- 0 ° LAUT 

5 r/ >~u?aJay~J- ~ A RAFURA SEA 


Torres Str. 


BATHURST 

TY.tfOtf S£,4 ' 

?Darwin 


. .. <>/ 

/ . o° " J 

-v* Pine Creek •- (Carpentaria 
lyt. Luell /f &/1 

* • w 




v -.a 


CORAL S^AI 


NORTHERN Nd , ,manton ' 1 


•s>\ 

>CobktownV\ * * 
CaifilsV. & *, 


(fir.) 


ELLICE 


SANTA CRUZ 


(fir.) 


(fir.) 


oO < 


Great Sandy Desert 

A U S 

;^W ESTERN " 


iaS . 

-vN 


Gibson's Desert t 


TERRITORY Cloncuriy 

, T R A- JL 

^ Amadeus | 

Lake | 


A.USTRALIA 


Gera Id tern 



_L__ 

SOUTHS Lake 
Eyre 


'.\ • *'. J 'A 9 

/ jL ' T V \ *"e . 

I „ tf**A ^ Rockhampbnil 

queenslandSTMm^^ . 


The Great Victoria Desert ,_i.\a v 
Ood^ ada 




40 " 


! AUSTRALIANS. . $ [) 

Kalgo orlie Nul/arbQr Plain £ Torrens ^vA v> 

J ' . \ TT O- : f' 


Great Australian Bight 










* ^ °fa Port Said and Aden 11,055 M 



-$Basj_ 




Strait 


TASMANIA 
Hofi 




0 

g NEW 
• HEBRIDES 

O 

(fir. & Fr.) 


o loyalYv 
& IS 




7 C 


CENTRAL , 
POLYNESIAN 
SPORA0ES 

(fir.) 


(t/.S.) 


HOWLAND I 
.BAKER I 


EQUATOR 


. tokeiaIt 


/ IS *W.$) 


uva 




Or.) , 


-;aC0 


Bri s 


,ba^ 


'Bris 


'bane 


to 


'S<^ 




0 


, NORFOLK 
I 


s M A N 


^Russell 




*/// 


7*. 


NORTH 




oV 








/ 


/ . ' IRlf N0LY Oh 


TO NGA 


(fir.) 


TROPIC 0E CAPRICORN 


E A N 


KERMADEC 


(fir.) 


• NEW Auckland^ 

op. '<1* ,SLAND /i^Roiofua 
‘ L A '''*I^ew Plymouth HP, " 

" '^Mt.£omont^TaupoFff aw j ce Bay 

- r ^v ' 7/ Napier 1 

ZEALAND l^ 4 v-^ r/ ellingtoh 

SOUTH °\_ uC&*jsoif\ 

hristchilrch 




161.1 ° 


- STEWART 



ISLAND 

Milford. Sd 


CHATHAM 

IS 

*■ (fir.) 


NART 


Dunedin 

Invercargill 


O N 


V 0 N. 


^ A \ 

^P N; 


GENERAL DRAFTING CO INC.. N Y 


.CHR.STMAS 

'(Br.) « 


MAN iKIKI 

is. 

(Br.) 


COOK 


(Br.) 


20 


120 


140 


180' 




160' 



















































































CARPENTER’S 
WORLD TRAVELS 

Familiar Talks About Countries 
and Peoples 

WITH THE AUTHOR ON THE SPOT AND 
THE READER IN HIS HOME, BASED 
ON THREE HUNDRED THOU¬ 
SAND MILES OF TRAVEL 
OVER THE GLOBE 


“READING CARPENTER IS SEEING THE WORLD" 











* 


( 

c 


< 

( c 

4 t 

< f 

< c < 


. 






* 






*s 
























H 





















\ 





' 




4 


















» 

a 

o 

^ * 
» 5 *> 

-•) 
























r 


■ 








/ 























IN AUSTRALIA 

The “great white continent” in the midst of the teeming coloured races 
of the Orient, our Anglo-Saxon cousins are building a new empire of 
the Pacific. 




CARPENTER’S WORLD TRAVELS 


Australia, New Zealand 

and 

Some Islands of the South Seas 

Australia, New Zealand, Thursday Island 
The Samoas, New Guinea, The Fi]is, 
and the Tongas 

Y 

FRANK G. CARPENTER 'I 

LITT.D., F.R.G.S. 



✓ / 

WITH 126 ILLUSTRATIONS 
FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1924 











COPYRIGHT, I924, BY 
FRANK G. CARPENTER . 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
AT 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PR.E8S, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 


First Edition 


1 - 


MAY -3 *24 


/ 



CU703140 

/'U' U'O , 1 — 


AC KNOWLEDGM ENTS 


I N THE publication of this volume on my travels in 
Australia, New Zealand, and the South Seas, I wish 
to thank the Secretary of State for letters which 
have given me the assistance of our official repre¬ 
sentative in the countries visited. I thank also the 
Secretary of Agriculture and our Secretary of Labour for 
appointing me an Honorary Commissioner of their De¬ 
partments in foreign lands. Their credentials have been 
of great value, making accessible sources of information 
seldom opened to the ordinary traveller. 

To the officials of the Commonwealth of Australia and 
the Dominion of New Zealand I desire to express my 
thanks for exceptional courtesies which greatly aided me 
in my investigations. 

I would also thank Mr. Dudley Harmon, my editor, and 
Miss Ellen McBryde Brown and Miss Josephine Lehmann, 
my associate editors, for their assistance and cooperation 
in the revision of notes dictated or penned by me on the 
ground. 

While nearly all of the illustrations in Carpenter’s 
World Travels are from my own negatives, those in this 
book have been supplemented by photographs from the 
official collections of the State and Commonwealth gov¬ 
ernments of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and 
the United States Department of Commerce. 


F. G. C. 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


I. 

Just a Word before We Start 

I 

II. 

The Giant of the South Seas . 

3 

III. 

Queensland . 

IO 

IV. 

A Crown of Gold and a Cross of Cactus 

19 

V. 

The Metropolis of the Antipodes 

24 

VI. 

Walks about Sydney . 

3 i 

VII. 

The Land of the Golden Fleece 

37 

VIII. 

In the Great Wool Market . . . 

42 

IX. 

Life on the Sheep Stations 

47 

X. 

Rabbits and Dingoes. 

56 

XI. 

Water for Thirsty Lands .... 

62 

XII. 

Melbourne. 

72 

XIII. 

In the Marts of the City .... 

80 

XIV. 

The State-owned Railways 

85 

XV. 

Gold Diggings in Creek and Desert . 

95 

XVI. 

A White Workers’ Continent . . . 

104 

XVII. 

The Three “R’s” in Australia . . 

H 3 

XVIII. 

The Aborigines. 

120 

XIX. 

Kangaroos and Dancing Birds . . 

129 

XX. 

Australia as Our Customer 

137 

XXI. 

Tasmania. 

vii 

144 





viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PA G E 

XXII. The Pearl Fisheries of Thursday 

Island.152 

XXIII. Australia’s Island Wards ... 159 

XXIV. Across the Tasman Sea to Welling¬ 
ton .165 

XXV. The Dominion of New Zealand . 170 

XXVI. “Social Pests”.178 

XXVII. The Women of the Dominion . 186 

XXVIII. A Country without a Poorhouse . 194 

XXIX. Where the Working Man Rules . 202 

XXX. On the Government Railways . . 213 

XXXI. The Yellowstone of New Zealand 220 

XXXII. The Maoris.227 

XXXIII. Mutton and Butter for London 

Tables.236 

XXXIV. Some Freaks of Nature .... 246 

XXXV. American Goods in New Zealand . 255 

XXXVI. The Fijis and the Tongas . . . 263 

XXXVII. The Samoas.273 

See the World with Frank G. Carpenter . . 282 

Index .287 









LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
In the “Great White Continent” . . . .Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Crossing the Murray River. 2 

The giant tree ferns. 3 

Wheat going to market . 6 

Wool for half the world. 6 

On the Brisbane water front. 7 

The Brisbane River. 7 

Queensland sugar.14 

Pineapples.14 

Bottle trees.15 

A settler’s home.18 

The hill of gold and copper.19 

The sapphire mines.19 

Clearing off the scrub.22 

How the farmers live.22 

Down town in Sydney.23 

At Bondi Beach.30 

Airplane view of Sydney harbour.31 

Manly Beach.31 

Hauling the wool clip to market.38 

Some champion Merinos.38 

Winter sports on Mount Kosciusko.39 

Skating amid the green.39 

In the sheepfold.46 

To a tea party on horseback.47 

ix 






















ILLUSTRATIONS 


Home life on a sheep station . 

FACING PAGE 

. 50 

The sheep shearers. 


5 1 

Sheep about to lose their wool 


5 i 

Home of a station manager 


54 

Boys who grow up on horseback . 


54 

The boundary rider .... 


55 

Irrigating orchard. 


62 

Rabbit fences. 


63 

Packing rabbit skins for export 


63 

A city on the reclaimed lands . 


66 

Breaking down the scrub . 


66 

Rescuing cattle from the drought 


67 

How water is saved .... 


67 

" Boiling the billy”. 


70 

Collins Street, Melbourne . 


7 i 

At the race track. 


78 

Melbourne city hall .... 


78 

The Parliament House .... 


79 

Alexandra Gardens. 


79 

Logging in the eucalyptus forest . 


86 

The Governor’s house at Perth 


87 

Moving the wheat crop 


87 

An artesian bore. 


94 

Panning gold. 


95 

The dry-blow process .... 


98 

A camel train. 


99 

The sheep-shearers’ “smoker” 


102 

The leather workers .... 


102 

The drive across country . 


103 

Immigrants landing .... 


110 

Girls learning to keep house . 

. 

in 


x 










ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

The grammar school at Melbourne.114 

How some children get to school.115 

Where farm wives go to school.115 

Half-civilized aborigines.118 

The aborigines of the wilds.119 

Turkey shooting by airplane.126 

Kangaroo. 

The Australian opossum.130 

Mother bear and her baby.131 

In Sydney's business district.134 

Loading wheat for export.134 

American machinery in Australian mines . . . 135 

Motor picnics in American cars.135 

The stripper harvester.142 

An Illinois harvester in Australia. ,142 

In Hobart, Tasmania. 143 

Logging on a Tasmanian river.146 

Hobart and Derwent River.147 

Orchards of the “Apple Isle".147 

Thursday Island.150 

Tattooed South Sea Island belles.150 

Opening the pearl oyster.151 

South Sea Islander.138 

A village house .159 

A South Sea warrior.162 

On the shores of the Tasman Sea.163 

Wellington harbour.163 

A New Zealand forest. , . 170 

The beautiful coast of South Island.171 

Potential water power.178 

A New Zealand farm.179 


xi 













ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

The crater of Mount Tarawera.179 

Developing new crops.182 

A settler’s home site.183 

A Maori belle.190 

Women hop pickers.191 

Beach at Napier.198 

The great Tasman glacier.199 

Christmas roses.206 

The wheat harvest.206 

The New Zealander’s favourite sport .... 207 

Sheep in a turnip field.214 

A private railroad.215 

At the Yellowstone of New Zealand.222 

Wairoa geyser.223 

The hot sulphur pit of White Island.226 

Maori house at Lake Taupo.226 

Poi dance.227 

Natural fireless cookers.227 

Bathers in the hot pools.230 

The Maori haka .231 

Grading butter for export.238 

The dying art of tattooing.239 

A New Zealand harbour.242 

The rabbit trappers’ catch.242 

Mount Egmont.243 

The totara tree.246 

On Mount Cook.247 

Kauri gum mines.254 

New Zealand flax.255 

Farming with tractor and gang ploughs . . . .258 

A dairy herd.239 

xii 



























ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

London’s mutton chops.259 

Gathering coconuts.262 

Tree nursery on a rubber plantation.263 

Savaii in eruption.270 

Native church at Apia.271 

Native mission school .271 

A Samoan beauty.274 

Copra ready for shipment.275 


xiii 












AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND 

AND 

SOME ISLANDS OF THE SOUTH SEAS 



AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND 

AND 

SOME ISLANDS OF THE SOUTH SEAS 


CHAPTER I 


JUST A WORD BEFORE WE START 

For to admire an’ for to see, 

For to be'old this world so wide— 
It never done no good to me, 

But I can’t drop it if I tried! 


S TARTING on a trip to Australia gives one for the 
moment the feeling expressed in Kipling’s lines. 
| The “Never-Never Land,” as it is called, is so far 
away, the voyage is so long, and thoughts of the to- 
be-discovered continent are so full of dreary anticipation! 
The vast stretches of desert, the monotonous reaches of 
forests where the trees shed their bark and the silence is 
broken only by the harsh cry of the “laughing jackass,” 
or kookooburra bird, the fearful dryness, and the awful 
heat—these things of which one reads so much in the books 
about the country do not make pleasant pictures in the 
mind of the traveller. 

One can go to Australia in three weeks on a comfortable 
steamer from Seattle, San Francisco, or Vancouver; my 
own trip, however, was taken after a long, hot stay in the 
Philippines and a leisurely drifting from there past Borneo 
and down the coast of Cochin-China to Singapore and 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Java. At Batavia I caught a little tramp steamer bound 
for the East on a route passing through the Dutch East 
Indies to Torres Strait, Thursday Island, and New 
Guinea, and thence going southward inside the Great 
Barrier Reef to Brisbane in Queensland. 

The itinerary looked interesting, the voyage venture¬ 
some, and as I walked on board my heart sang. A day 
or so later it wept. The meat was atrocious, the bread 
soggy, the rancid butter oil, and the water lukewarm and 
bitter. As a whole, my fellow voyagers were no better than 
the food. For the most part they were a motley crowd 
of dirty Hindoos and Malays, with the flotsam and jetsam, 
blacks, browns, and whites found scattered throughout 
the islands. 

Moreover, two of our Moslem passengers developed a 
fever, which led to our being quarantined at some of the 
ports. We were twenty-five long days on the Equator, 
and it was only when the cool breezes off the Barrier Reef 
blew new ozone into our lungs that life again seemed worth 
the living. 

But from the day I landed in Brisbane and started off 
on my journeyings in the ‘"lonely continent ” to the day on 
which I once more turned my face toward home I had no 
regrets that I had come. Australia was full of surprises 
and of interest for me; the beauties of New Zealand and 
the air of its mountains soon drove the evil out of my soul 
and put new life into my bones. I decided that here was 
a case where the desire “for to admire and for to see” that 
had sent me off to the other side of the world had done 
some good to me after all. I trust that you, too, may be 
glad that I went and that I have set down here the story 
of what I saw. 


2 



The few rivers of Australia are short and mostly unnavigable. In 
summer many of the streams dry up entirely or form a series of detached 
pools. The one big river system is the Murray, on the eastern side of the 
continent. 










In some dense Australian wilds are towering tree ferns such as dis¬ 
appeared from the rest of the earth before the Coal Age and are now seen 
elsewhere only in the fossilized remains of prehistoric times. 




CHAPTER II 


THE GIANT OF THE SOUTH SEAS 

HE Australians say their country is the biggest 



thing south of the Equator, and what I have seen 


here makes me think that they are right. Aus- 


A tralia is as big as the United States without 
Alaska, twenty-five times larger than Great Britain and 
Ireland, fifteen times the size of France, and three fourths 
as large as all Europe. 

It is a country of magnificent distances, being longer 
from east to west than the distance from New York to 
Salt Lake, and wider from north to south than from New 
York to Chicago. By the fastest trains, Brisbane is 
thirty-six hours from Sydney, and Sydney is eighteen 
hours from Melbourne. It takes three days and eighteen 
hours to make the trip by rail from Melbourne on the 
southeast to Perth on the southwest coast. 

Australia is also a land great in its resources. Since 
gold was discovered there in 1851, it has produced five 
billion dollars' worth of the precious metal. Gold has 
been found all over the continent—in the mountains, on 
the farms, and in the sands of the deserts. Yet the greater 
part of the country has never been prospected, vast areas 
have not even been explored, and new gold mines may be 
discovered any day. It is known that the continent con¬ 
tains great quantities of iron, and tin has been extensively 
mined. There is coal in every state and the deposits of 


3 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

New South Wales, the only ones that have been well sur¬ 
veyed, are estimated to contain more than one billion tons. 
The coal beds of the state of Queensland are believed to be 
inexhaustible. Silver, too, is found in all the states, and 
the Broken Hill mines of New South Wales are among the 
richest of the world. 

More important than its mineral wealth, however, are 
the pastoral and agricultural riches of Australia. Enor¬ 
mous flocks of sheep pasture on the sweet grasses of thou¬ 
sands upon thousands of her acres. She produces some of 
the best wool on earth and exports a quarter of a billion 
dollars’ worth annually. Her wheat lands produce enough 
for the needs of her five and a half million people and 
furnish one hundred million bushels for export. It is 
estimated that with close settlement she can raise one 
I billion bushels, or sufficient to feed a population of one 
hundred and fifty millions. Dairying is now one of the 
largest of her industries and sixty million dollars’ worth of 
Australian butter goes overseas every year. 

In Australia there are great fertile tracts of land, but 
there are also vast areas of desert. The well-watered 
eastern part of the continent is rolling and hilly for about 
one hundred and fifty miles back from the coast. West of 
this region lies the country of plains, the first part of which 
is a belt of prairie lands three hundred miles wide, where 
there are fine sheep and cattle ranches and wheat and 
fruit farms. Here, too, is the only real river system of 
Australia, the Murray-Darling. Near the western border 
of the plains is the salt Lake Eyre sunk in a depression be¬ 
low sea level. Beyond Lake Eyre, extending almost across 
the continent to within three hundred miles of the west 
coast, and to within about the same distance from the 
4 


THE GIANT OF THE SOUTH SEAS 


ocean on the north and south, is the Great Desert, This 
has an estimated area of eight hundred thousand square 
miles, or about one fourth of all Australia. Except 
in the southwest corner, where gold is mined, there are 
said to be less than one thousand white people in this 
arid waste. The air is so dry that one’s fingernails be¬ 
come as brittle as glass, screws come out of boxes, and 
lead drops out of pencils. I am told there are six-year- 
old children living in this region who have never seen a 
drop of rain. 

Australia is a land of strange things as well as big ones— 
queer plants, queer animals, and aborigines who are the 
most backward members of the human race. There are 
lilies that reach the height of a three-story house, trees 
that grow grass, and other trees whose trunks bulge out 
like bottles. In the dense “bush” are mighty eucalyptus 
trees rising two hundred feet high. They shed their bark 
instead of their foliage, and the leaves are attached to the 
stems obliquely instead of horizontally. There are tower¬ 
ing tree ferns such as disappeared from the rest of the 
earth before the Coal Age and are now seen elsewhere only 
in the fossilized remains of prehistoric times. 

Two thirds of the animals of Australia, like its famous 
kangaroo, are marsupials; that is, the females have pouches 
in which they carry their young. Except for the opossum, 
and the opossum rat of Patagonia, marsupials occur 
nowhere else. Stranger than the kangaroo, stranger even 
than Australia’s wingless bird, the emu, is the platypus, 
which is found only on this island continent. It has a 
bill like a duck’s, fur like a seal’s, and a pouch like that 
of a kangaroo. It is equally at home on the land and in 
the water. It lays eggs, yet it is a mammal; though a 

5 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

mammal it has no teats, but nourishes its young by means 
of milk that exudes through pores into its pouch. 

As for the natives, when William Dampier, the first 
Englishman to land on the shores of Australia, came here 
in 1699, he described the aborigines as “the miserablest 
people in the world, with the unpleasantest looks and 
the worst features of any people I ever saw. Setting 
aside their human shape, they differ little from brutes.” 
Whence these natives came and how long they had been on 
their island continent none knows. All agree, however, 
that the bushman, or blackfellow, as he is generally called, 
is the lowest form of man. Throughout uncounted years 
he has made no progress. He is without history and with¬ 
out tradition. Contact with civilization kills him. The 
aborigines of Australia are a dying race, numbering now a 
scant fifty thousand. 

For centuries after the rest of the world was making his¬ 
tory, Terra Australis, or the South Land as it was called, 
was also a terra incognita, a land unknown. This does 
not seem strange when one considers how isolated it is. 
It is so far from the other land masses of the globe that 
it deserves its name of the “lonely continent.” It is 
eighteen hundred miles from Asia, forty-five hundred 
miles from Africa, and more than six thousand miles from 
the west coast of North America. Even New Zealand, 
which on the map looks so close to it, is twelve hundred 
miles away. It takes the best Pacific steamers nineteen 
days to go from Sydney to San Francisco, and for the 
fastest mail boats it is a five-weeks' voyage from any Aus¬ 
tralian port to Liverpool. 

When the United States was an infant among the inde¬ 
pendent nations of the earth, the history of Australia be- 
6 



Australia produces enough wheat for her 5,250,000 people, and has 
100,000,000 bushels for export. With close settlement, it is estimated that 
she can raise 1,000,000,000 bushels, or sufficient for 150,000,000 people. 



Half the world is kept warm with wool from the flocks of sheep pas¬ 
tured on tens of thousands of Australia’s acres. She produces some of the 
best wool on earth, and exports more than any other country. 






Fifty years ago Brisbane was a village, and before that a British con¬ 
vict colony. To-day it is the fourth city in size in the Commonwealth, 
and the capital of the progressive state of Queensland. 



Brisbane is cut in two by the Brisbane River, a wide stream navigated by 
ocean vessels, which come here for cargoes of frozen beef, wool, and grain. 













THE GIANT OF THE SOUTH SEAS 

gan. And just here the story of the “lonely continent” 
is linked with our own. There were a number of persons 
in the American colonies who remained loyal to the King 
throughout the Revolutionary War. When independence 
was won they found this country an uncomfortable place 
in which to stay. So it was planned by the British to 
make Australia a new home for the American “ Loyalists/' 
This scheme failed, but another took its place. In colonial 
days the British had used America as a dumping place for 
undesirable citizens, especially political prisoners, and had 
sent them across the Atlantic at the rate of one thousand a 
year. Now that this human riffraff could no longer be 
shipped to us it was decided to transport them to Australia. 
Accordingly, in 1788 a thousand convicts were landed at 
Sydney Cove, and this was the beginning of the British 
occupation of the great South Land. 

One hundred and thirteen years after that initial settle¬ 
ment there came into being the Commonwealth of Aus¬ 
tralia. In the birth year of the present century, the half 
dozen different Australian colonies, some as widely sepa¬ 
rated as any parts of our own country, became a federated 
union of the six states of Queensland, Victoria, New South 
Wales, South Australia, West Australia, and Tasmania. 
Before this these states had quarrelled frequently over mat¬ 
ters of trade and internal development, and each had gone 
its way without regard for its neighbours. With federa¬ 
tion, the tariff barriers between them were removed, com¬ 
mon policies were agreed upon, and all joined hands in 
the determination to work together to create a new nation 
of white men within the British Empire. 

Besides the six states, there are the Northern Territory, 
the Federal Territory, and the territories of Papua and 

7 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

New Guinea. The Northern Territory is the tropical area 
of some half a million square miles ceded by the state of 
South Australia to the central government. The Federal 
Territory corresponds nearly to our District of Columbia; 
for it is the nine hundred and forty square miles set aside 
for Canberra, the new capital of the Commonwealth. 
During the erection of the necessary buildings at Can¬ 
berra, the capital remains at Melbourne. The territory of 
Papua, or British New Guinea, is the southeastern part of 
the island of New Guinea and is administered by officials 
nominated by the Governor-General of Australia. The 
Territory of New Guinea consists of those lands formerly 
embraced in German New Guinea, which Australia gov¬ 
erns under a mandate from the League of Nations. 

In many ways the constitution of the Commonwealth 
is like ours. Each of the states has its separate govern¬ 
ment, with great latitude in the management of its own 
affairs. The British Crown appoints a Governor-General 
for the whole Commonwealth, but his authority is merely 
nominal and the real executive power is in the hands of the 
Premier of Australia and his nine ministers. The Prime 
Minister is the leader of the majority of the Federal Parlia¬ 
ment of which he and his cabinet must be members. 

Parliament consists of a Senate and a House, organized 
much like our own Congress. The Senators are elected for 
six years and the representatives for three, but under cer¬ 
tain conditions the House may be dissolved by the 
Governor-General before the three-year term is up. There 
are seventy-six representatives elected in proportion to 
population, and thirty-six senators, six from each state. 
Senators and representatives get the same salaries, each 
receiving five thousand dollars a year. It is provided that 
8 


THE GIANT OF THE SOUTH SEAS 


no member of Parliament can hold office if he has been 
bankrupt and failed to pay his debts, and if he takes bene¬ 
fit, whether by assignment or otherwise, of any bankruptcy 
law during his term of office his seat will at once become 
vacant. He cannot have any interest in any company 
trading with the government, nor can he take pay for other 
services rendered to the government. The state govern¬ 
ments are organized like that of the Commonwealth, each 
having its premier, who is the leader of the majority in the 
state Parliament. 

Following the World War many countries experienced 
political upheavals and radical ventures in government. 
But it was in Australia years earlier that a working-man’s 
party first gained control of a national government. As 
we go about in the several states of the Commonwealth we 
shall find many evidences of the part played in public 
affairs by the labour unions. They have frequently held 
a majority in state legislatures, but are especially anxious 
to dominate the federal Parliament so that they may put 
their ideas into effect on a wholesale scale. Woman 
suffrage, adopted in Australia almost without opposition, 
has added strength to the labour element, for it is generally 
agreed that nearly every workingman’s wife goes to the 
polls, while many of the women of the well-to-do classes 
stay at home. 


9 


CHAPTER III 


QUEENSLAND 


M OST travellers from our hemisphere first set 
foot on the Australian continent at Sydney, 
the biggest seaport of the country and the 
seventh city in size in the whole British Em¬ 
pire. I first stepped out upon its mainland at Brisbane, 
which lies five hundred miles north of Sydney and is the 
capital of the state of Queensland. 

In coming down the coast from Thursday Island and 
Torres Strait I had one of the wonder trips of the world, 
for my way lay inside the Great Barrier Reef. 

Imagine a chain of coral as long as from New Orleans 
to Chicago. Let the chain be composed now of atolls, 
great coral walls encircling lagoons, now of long coral 
ridges, and now of gardens of the beautiful red, white, 
and pink flowers fashioned by these insects of the seas. 
Such is the Great Barrier Reef, which extends along 
the whole eastern coast of Australia northward to Torres 
Strait. For the most part it is only from five to fifteen 
miles from the mainland although in one place it is a 
hundred miles off shore. At times we were close to the 
coast, and again were moving along near huge rings of 
coral that seemed to float on the green sea. Some of the 
atolls had vegetation upon them, their round basins being 
circled with coconut trees, while others, seen only at low 
tide, were stony and bare. 


io 


QUEENSLAND 

The air was wonderfully clear and the sky a heavenly 
blue. The few clouds made big patches of dark blue vel¬ 
vet on the dreary gray of the Australian mountains. The 
sea was as smooth as a mill pond. We were feeling our 
way along through a wide canal, one side of which was 
walled with the cliffs of Australia and the other by this 
masonry of countless millions of coral polyps. Our 
steamer had to go cautiously, for under the smooth waters 
were treacherous spurs and peaks of coral ready to rip 
holes in her side. Our captain kept a sharp lookout for 
brown waters, which mean bars, or green, which indicate 
coral, and steered a course through the deep blue of the 
safe passage. Among navigators the shallows between 
Cape York and New Guinea have the reputation of being 
the worst waters in the world. Some of the ship captains 
boast that they can smell the coral in the dark, just as 
those of our transatlantic liners declare that they can 
smell the ice of the bergs that drift down from the North. 

Such cautious sailing began to get on the nerves of some 
of the passengers and I think all of us were glad when our 
steamer turned into Moreton Bay, the outer harbour of 
Brisbane. We approached a low shore of sandy dunes and 
beaches rising gradually into rolling hills thick with trees. 
Slowly we entered the mouth of the wide Brisbane River, 
up which we travelled for several hours. As our steamer 
went on through the murky water, we could look over the 
side and see masses of jelly fish, transparent mushrooms of 
bright violet, tossed this way and that by the waves from 
the ship. The banks were low and covered with bushes. 
Along the way there were meat-freezing plants, each sur¬ 
rounded by little houses roofed with galvanized iron, the 
homes of the workmen. 


ii 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

As we kept on, the country on each side of the river be¬ 
came more hilly, and when we reached Brisbane I found it 
a place of as many gulleys as Kansas City. Most of the 
town lies on the right bank of the river. There are many 
pretty villas, and rising high above them is the Queensland 
Parliament House. 

After a lenient examination by the customs officials, I 
drove to my hotel through streets not unlike those of an 
American town. They were paved with wood instead of 
brick or asphalt. The stores reminded me of ours at home, 
and the size of the buildings surprised me. 

Brisbane, the capital of the second largest of the six 
states of Australia, has more than two hundred thousand 
people, and is the fourth city in size on the continent. 
During the last half century it has had a phenomenal 
growth. Less than seventy-five years ago it was taken 
away from the neighbouring colony of New South Wales 
and became the capital of Queensland. At first it grew but 
slowly, for it was handicapped by having been the site of 
the Moreton Bay Settlement, a colony for the worst of 
the convicts sent over from England. When it began to get 
on its feet a terrible flood swept away so many of the houses 
in the low-lying sections that it was believed the town 
would never recover. Yet it took a new lease of life, and 
to-day it is hard to realize that, fifty years ago, it was only 
a village with less than one thousand inhabitants. 

The public buildings were planned with an eye to the 
needs of the future. The State Treasury would do credit 
to our own capital at Washington. The Law Courts cost 
nearly two hundred thousand dollars, and the Parliament 
Building half a million. In George Street is a splendid 
palace which houses the Lands Office, and the Public 


12 


QUEENSLAND 

Library is a striking piece of Italian architecture. On a 
steep cliff above the big-domed custom house rises the 
Cathedral of St. John, considered the finest Gothic struc¬ 
ture in all Australasia. 

Talking with the Queenslanders it is easy to see that 
they think theirs is the coming state of Australia. They 
say the good lands of Victoria have long since been taken 
up, that New South Wales is fairly well developed, and 
that such large areas of South Australia and West Aus¬ 
tralia are desert that those states can never support a great 
population. Queensland has two slogans: One claims 
that it is “a paradise for willing workers/' and the other 
that it is ‘The richest unpeopled country in the world." 
The state has vast tracts of arid land, which it expects 
to reclaim by artesian wells. It has already redeemed 
from the desert a country more than twice as large as the 
state of New York, having discovered that most of the 
great area beyond the coastal range is underlaid with sub¬ 
terranean lakes and streams, which will furnish water for 
stock. The cultivated acreage is growing every year. 
Enough pastures for seventeen million sheep are now in 
use, and the state has already nearly twice as many sheep 
as any other division of Australia. 

Queensland might be called “The Newest England" of 
these British south lands. It is a principality in itself. 
It comprises the northeastern quarter of the Australian 
continent; from north to south it is as long as from Wash¬ 
ington to Omaha, and from east to west about as wide as 
from Washington to Chicago. It is three times as big 
as France, and twelve times the size of England and 
Wales. 

The upper half of Queensland is not far from the Equa- 
13 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

tor and raises cotton, sugar, tobacco, and all sorts of trop¬ 
ical fruits. Bananas do so well that one of its nicknames 
is the “ Banana State.” Scrub lands cleared at a cost of 
about ten dollars an acre can be planted without plough¬ 
ing and will produce fruit in a twelvemonth. Fifteen tons 
of pineapples to the acre is not an unusual crop, and pines 
weighing from fourteen to sixteen pounds have been 
grown. The factories for canning this fruit that have 
been started with the aid of the government may some 
day compete with the great pineapple canneries of Hawaii. 

A great advantage of the fruit-growing business in 
Australia, as in South America, is the difference in sea¬ 
sons in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Being 
south of the Equator, the fruits ripen at a time of year 
when European and North American markets offer the 
best prices, and refrigeration and fast boats are already 
landing Queensland fruits on our winter tables. 

Australia usually raises enough sugar to supply her own 
needs, and ninety per cent, of her crop is produced in trop¬ 
ical Queensland. Sugar cane was first grown here about 
1865, and in the early days the plantations were worked 
with coloured labour brought in from the South Sea 
islands. Later on it was decided to send the "blacks” 
home, and keep the resources of the state for white men 
exclusively. From the standpoint of the growers, this was 
a real sacrifice, and the Commonwealth government is now 
doing everything possible to stimulate sugar production. 
At one time it paid bonuses on sugar produced by white 
men, but these have been given up. Now the government 
buys the entire crop outright and controls its refining and 
sale. The cane is crushed in Queensland, but is refined by 
the big Colonial Sugar Refining Company in Melbourne 
14 



Australia has her sugar bowl in Queensland, which produces nearly 
enough cane to supply the entire population. It is one of the few places in 
the world where the crop is grown without coloured labour. 



When it is snowing in New York, the Queensland fruit grower is gather¬ 
ing his pineapples. They are raised on land leased from the government 
with the privilege of purchase on easy terms. 








On the elevated sandstone plains of interior Queensland grows the 
queer bottle tree. One’s general impression of Australian forests is their 
total unlikeness to anything elsewhere. 




QUEENSLAND 

and Sydney. Under the government monopoly the con¬ 
sumer pays about twelve cents a pound. Importation of 
sugar by private individuals or companies is forbidden, 
and whenever the Queensland crop falls below three hun¬ 
dred thousand tons the government imports enough to 
meet the requirements. 

In the southern part of the state are the Darling Downs, 
four million acres of the richest soil on the continent. 
Here the average rainfall is more than thirty inches a year, 
and almost everywhere artesian water may be had within 
a few feet of the surface. Since they were first settled in 
1840 the Downs have been the home of prosperity. To¬ 
day they roll away in orchards and green fields, dotted 
here and there with herds of fat dairy cattle, and checkered 
with chocolate squares of ploughed lands. I am told that 
some of the soil is too rich to raise wheat until it has been 
farmed a few years. In some places it produces one hun¬ 
dred and ten bushels of corn to the acre, and on a number 
of farms two crops are raised every year. A great deal of 
money is made in alfalfa, which grows very rank. Often 
as many as nine crops are cut in one year, each yielding 
from one to two tons per acre. On the best land it is not 
uncommon for a man to get a hundred dollars per acre 
annually out of alfalfa. As a general thing the farming is 
carelessly done, and but little fertilizer is used. The seeds 
are merely sown and the crop is reaped. 

The principal city on the Downs is Toowoomba, two hun¬ 
dred miles west of Brisbane and two thousand feet above 
sea level. It serves as a playground and health resort for 
the people of Brisbane and elsewhere in the hot lowlands. 
Throughout the year the climate is temperate and bracing, 
and in June and July, the coolest months of the year, there 

15 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

are often frosty mornings here and fires are welcome at 
night. 

Toowoomba is also the unofficial capital of the rich 
farming district of the Downs. Its streets are gen¬ 
erally full of men who have ridden in from the country 
to talk sheep, wool, grapes, wheat, or timber, or to seek 
amusement after their hard work in the fields. Its pretty 
homes are surrounded by gardens of English flowers and 
hawthorne hedges and rows of weeping willow trees. I 
have seen many weeping willows along the streams of 
Australia, and the people say that all are the descendants 
of slips brought from the island of St. Helena. In the old 
days ships bound for Australia used to stop for water at 
the place of Napoleon’s exile and the outgoing colonists 
provided themselves with willow cuttings to be planted in 
their new homes. 

Queensland’s great need is more people. In this huge 
state, capable of supporting a population of many millions, 
there are less than eight hundred thousand, or only about 
one person to every square mile. I have before me an ad¬ 
vertisement of the Acting-Registrar General declaring that 
the two necessities of the state are “increased production 
and increased population” and offering inducements in 
the way of cheap lands on easy terms to “the industrious 
in every walk of life.” 

Throughout Australia land transfers are made under 
what is called the Torrens Title, a system which has 
spread to Canada, to England, and to other countries of 
Europe, and has been adopted by the United States for the 
Philippines and Hawaii. Ohio also has adopted it, and 
others of our states are using it in modified forms. By 
this system the landowner registers his property with the 
16 ' 


QUEENSLAND 

land office, receiving a duplicate certificate of title. If 
later he wishes to sell he hands over the certificate to the 
purchaser, who has the sale registered at the land office, 
where the facts of the transaction are entered on the 
original certificate. If the owner puts a mortgage on the 
property the terms are recorded with the Registrar. The 
certificate therefore always contains the name of the owner, 
a description of the land, and a statement of all liens and 
encumbrances. No title searching is necessary, and by the 
payment of a small fee at the Registrar’s office, anybody 
can find out all about a given piece of land. The Torrens 
System and the secret ballot are two big ideas that we owe 
to our Australian cousins. 

For many years a thorn in the flesh of the small farmers 
and workingmen of Queensland was the fact that, by 
special legislation, big lease holders of the public lands 
paid lower rents per acre than the holders of small tracts. 
The Land Act Bill of 1915, framed to remedy this condi¬ 
tion, was passed by the lower house of the state Parliament 
but was rejected by the upper chamber, or Legislative 
Council. The Council was at that time composed of 
thirty-seven members appointed nominally by the Crown, 
but really by the Queensland Prime Minister and his 
Cabinet. They could hold office for life, and no limit was 
placed on their number. As constituted in 1915, the 
Council had only two representatives of labour and the 
rest of its members were conservatives, many of them 
moneyed men determined to guard their own interests. 
On the other hand, the seventy-two members of the Legis¬ 
lative Assembly are elected by the people for three-year 
terms. The Land Act Bill was passed by the next As¬ 
sembly and again rejected by the Council. Then the 
17 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

government stepped in to see that the will of the people 
was carried out. It appointed enough new members 
known to favour the act to swamp the conservatives in the 
Council, and the bill at once became law. So enlarged, 
the Council, with its majority in absolute accord with that 
in the lower house, became a mere rubber stamp for the 
legislation passed by the Assembly, and even approved the 
bill ending its own existence. 

The government of Queensland is sometimes criticized 
as a patriarchal institution for coddling the people. 
Both town and country make all sorts of demands on it to 
serve their interests. They tell a story of one official who, 
exasperated by a deputation of farmers, burst out with 
this: 

“You ask the government to do everything. I am 
surprised that you do not demand that we furnish milk for 
your babies.” 


18 



Queensland, the northern half of which lies just south of the Equator, 
is sometimes called the “ Banana State,” because of the success of settlers 
in growing that fruit in the newly cleared lands. 




The farmer who owned the hill now known as Mount Morgan sold it to 
prospectors for five dollars an acre. It has since yielded gold worth 
$125,000,000 besides vast quantities of copper. 



In the Anakie gold fields of western Queensland mining sapphires is a 
well established industry, with an output worth about one hundred thou¬ 
sand dollars a year. The lemon or orange tinted stones are the most 
prized. 











CHAPTER IV 


A CROWN OF GOLD AND A CROSS OF CACTUS 

O UEENSLAND is one of the gold states of 
Australia. It is especially noted for Mount 
Morgan, perhaps the richest gold mine of the 
world. This mountain is twenty-four miles 
from the city of Rockhampton, on the coast north of 
Brisbane. It has already produced more than one hun¬ 
dred and twenty-five million dollars’ worth of gold, and 
paid more than fifty million dollars in dividends. The 
original fourteen owners invested only a few hundred 
pounds. 

The mountain belongs to a low range of hills not far 
from the coast. It was part of a farm owned by a man 
named Gordon, who had fenced it in and was using it for 
pasturage. One night Gordon was visited by two broth¬ 
ers named Morgan, who were prospecting. The Morgans 
stayed overnight, and Gordon told them he thought there 
was copper on his farm as he had noticed green and blue 
stains in the rocks. The next day he took the prospectors 
to the mountain, and when they left they carried away 
samples. A few days later they came back and offered 
him five dollars an acre for the property. He was glad 
to sell, and for this price the Morgans bought one of the 
richest mining properties ever known. To get money to 
work the mine they sold a half interest to three men in 
Rockhampton for ten thousand dollars. With this they 
19 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

experimented, and finally discovered that the ore could 
be worked by the chlorination process. The result was 
that they and their associates soon became millionaires. 

Since then the works have expanded until a town has 
grown up at the foot of the mountain. There are great 
mills, in which more than two thousand men are employed. 
The mine has continued to pay big dividends, but these 
now come from copper rather than from gold. For, when 
the gold began to grow scarce, apparently inexhaustible 
supplies of copper were found underneath the deposits of 
the more precious metal. 

Some people think that there may be other gold de¬ 
posits in the neighbourhood equally as rich as those of 
Mount Morgan. However that may be, it is a fact that 
twenty miles from the city a little boy one day found a 
nugget worth ten thousand dollars. 

Rockhampton is a city of twenty thousand founded on 
the gold and copper mines. It is now growing as a cen¬ 
tre of the dairying and mixed farming interests fast de¬ 
veloping in the surrounding country. The town, which 
has the Tropic of Capricorn running through one of its 
streets, is built some thirty miles inland on a steamy 
valley of the Fitzroy River. It is cut off by a high range 
of hills from the ocean breezes. Even in June, the coolest 
month of the year, the thermometer goes above eighty 
degrees Fahrenheit, and in February the mercury often 
rises to one hundred and sixteen. In the early gold-mining 
days the Britishers who came out to get rich and toiled in 
the heat nicknamed the place the “City of the Three 
S’s”—Sin, Sweat, and Sorrow. Nevertheless, it is a 
growing town full of business. 

Three hundred miles northwest of Rockhampton is the 


20 


CROWN OF GOLD AND CROSS OF CACTUS 


town of Charters Towers, the centre of another big gold 
field a few miles back of the seaport of Townsville. The 
gold at the “Towers” was discovered in 1872 by three 
prospectors, who took out millions of dollars’ worth in a 
short time. The principal mining is quartz, some of the 
workings being very deep. As at Mount Morgan, copper 
mining is carried on profitably along with the gold min¬ 
ing. Another field is that of Gympie, where, it is said, 
the boys used to pick up grains of gold in the streets after 
a rain, sometimes getting as much as half an ounce a day. 
In that town one man found a nugget worth eleven hun¬ 
dred dollars. 

So far, Queensland has produced nearly half a billion 
dollars’ worth of gold, and mines are still being worked 
throughout a large area, although the cream of the known 
deposits has been skimmed off. 

There are also deposits of lead, as well as of iron, 
bismuth, and,silver. Iron is found in all sections, and 
in one district there are little mountains of iron ore. 
Mt. Leviathan, a hill two hundred feet high, is said to be 
composed of pure magnetic iron. In the long tongue of 
York Peninsula, which Queensland thrusts up toward 
Torres Strait, there are tin deposits over a wide area. 
Tin is found also in the southern part of the state. 

Some of the finest Australian opals come from western 
Queensland. That region has a long belt of opal-bear¬ 
ing country, extending from a point near the Gulf of 
Carpentaria across the southern border of the state and 
into New South Wales. The opals are brought into Bris¬ 
bane by the handful and sold at low prices. Many of the 
opal miners are sheep-shearers, who hunt for the stones in 
the off season. The gems are found in quartz and in 
21 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

sandstone, from six inches to thirty feet below the surface. 
The Queensland black opal brings big prices in Paris, 
London, and New York. It is not really black but a 
mixture of rich colours, with iridescent green and violet 
prevailing. Deep down in its heart is a living spark of 
flame, which has given it also the name of the “fire opal.” 

About two hundred miles west of Rockhampton are the 
Anakie gem fields which are studded with sapphires. 
Stones to the value of nearly one hundred thousand 
dollars are produced there every year. The best of them 
are of the clear lemon and orange tints which have become 
especially popular with the jewellers of Paris. 

So much for Queensland's crown of gold studded with 
gems. Her cross is the greenish-gray cactus, which has 
ruined vast areas of rich agricultural lands. I have heard 
different stories about how prickly pear came to Aus¬ 
tralia. Some say John Macarthur, who was such a bene¬ 
factor to the country through his introduction of the 
Merino sheep from Spain, is responsible for it. Perhaps 
he had seen the cactus hedges used in the thickly settled 
Mediterranean countries to separate small holdings and 
thought they would be a good thing for the gardens and 
paddocks of the Australian settlers. It is even said that 
the first prickly-pear plant was sent to the Downs care¬ 
fully wrapped in cotton wool and packed in a sealed box. 
Now, for mile upon mile the traveller sees only an im¬ 
penetrable thicket of this spiny, gray-green vegetation, 
growing right up to the settlers’ front doors. It is stated 
that the plant covers more than fifteen million acres of 
Queensland, or an area nearly twice that of Rhode Island. 

The state government sent a Prickly-Pear Commission 
on an eighteen-months’ tour around the world in the 


22 



When an Australian speaks of clearing the land of “scrub” he does not 
refer to a mere matter of brush and saplings, but to what we would consider 
a dense forest of full-grown trees. 



In the cattle country of southern Queensland the farm houses are one- 
story frame bungalows, roofed with corrugated iron and often set up on 
iron piles to keep out the wood-devouring ants. 







An American dropped from an airplane into Martin Place, Sydney, 
would feel very much at home. Many of the newer buildings are of our 
skyscraper type, while the street is filled with motor cars made in the 
States. 













CROWN OF GOLD AND CROSS OF CACTUS 


effort to find some parasite or disease with which to destroy 
the pear. It has offered great rewards to any chemist who 
finds a specific against it, and year by year different 
methods of extermination are tried out. So far, how¬ 
ever, no cheap and infallible way has been found. Up¬ 
rooting or cutting is useless, unless every single leaf is 
burned. Squirting a solution of arsenic and soda into 
each leaf by means of a “pear gun” has proved effective 
in the case of small growing plants, but this is too slow and 
expensive on such an overwhelming proposition as fifteen 
million acres. The remedy probably lies in the closer 
settlement of the country and the principle of every 
man’s keeping his own dooryard clean. 


23 


CHAPTER V 


THE METROPOLIS OF THE ANTIPODES 

I AM in Sydney, the fastest-growing city of Australia 
and the commercial metropolis of this part of the 
world. People who look upon the island continent 
as a big desert surrounded by a strip of pasture 
should come to Sydney. They will find here a city that 
will open their eyes. It has now about the population of 
St. Louis or Boston, but it seems to have twice as much 
business as any place of the same size in the United States. 
Situated south of the Equator and about the same dis¬ 
tance from it as Louisiana, it lies in the centre of the most 
populous part of Australia, and just where goods can most 
easily come in for distribution over a vast territory. 
Sydney is the capital and distribution point for the two 
million people of New South Wales, a state the size of 
Texas and Indiana combined. These two million are the 
richest people of a country with a per-capita wealth of 
$1,624 °L at five to the family, eighty-one hundred dol¬ 
lars per family. 

I know one man who has a million acres of land, and I 
could hardly throw a stone in the business part of Sydney 
without striking the holder of five thousand acres and 
more. There are men here who have a million sheep, and 
many who own flocks of tens of thousands. Australia has 
no Fords or Rockefellers. Rarely does any one leave an 
estate worth above five million dollars. On the other 
24 


THE METROPOLIS OF THE ANTIPODES 


hand, the wealth is more evenly divided than in the 
United States, and the workers live much more comfort¬ 
ably than their brothers in Europe. Everywhere on the 
streets of Sydney I see signs of well-being. There are no 
patched clothes, and in fact there is no poverty as we 
know it. 

Of all the big cities south of the Equator, I like Sydney 
best. Especially do I like the people here. Buenos 
Aires has a population of more than a million and a half, 
but it is a succotash of Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish 
ingredients, with a mixture of Indian, English, German, 
and French. Rio de Janeiro has a million and a quarter 
inhabitants, sprinkled with so much African blood that 
one can hardly tell where the white ends and the black 
begins. Moreover, as in other cities of South America, 
most of the people are wretchedly poor. 

Here the faces are all English, Irish, and Scotch, or, 
what is better, pure Australian. The Australians are 
finer looking than their British cousins. They are taller, 
straighter, and better-formed. Six feet is not an un¬ 
common height for either men or women. The latter 
are Amazons. Many of them are slender and they tower 
above me like so many giantesses. They are sometimes 
called “cornstalks,” because they spring up so rapidly 
and grow so tall. 

Its magnificent harbour and the enterprise of its people 
have made Sydney the New York of Australia. The 
city does business with all the world. It is the terminus 
of a dozen great steamship lines connecting the continent 
with Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. 
To-day there are tramps in the harbour from Cape Town, 
ships from China and Japan, fast vessels from France, 

25 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

and big steamers from England. One American passenger 
line connects Sydney with San Francisco, and three 
others carry freight to and from our Pacific and Atlan¬ 
tic coasts. The Commonwealth Line, which now oper¬ 
ates a number of Australian government-owned ships of 
steel and wood, has a regular service from Sydney to 
London via the Suez Canal. Besides being linked up 
with all the great ports of the world, Sydney is a centre 
of trade along the coast and with the countless islands of 
the South Seas. 

The commerce here is enormous. The wool shipments 
alone have a value of something like sixty million dollars a 
year, and there is a large export of grain, coal, and meat. 
Considering the number of the population, the imports 
are very heavy. Although New South Wales has not 
so many people as Chicago, it buys three hundred and 
sixty million dollars’ worth of goods from foreign coun¬ 
tries every year, and most of them come in through 
Sydney. 

In beauty and commercial advantages, Sydney harbour 
equals the Bay of Naples, the harbour of Rio de Janeiro, 
or the famous waters about Constantinople on the Bos¬ 
porus. At its entrance, which is not more than a mile 
wide, great rocks rising to more than half the height of 
the Washington Monument form a natural gateway. No 
matter how stormy the ocean outside, when a steamer 
passes the Heads, it finds quiet waters. It enters a wind¬ 
ing lake or stream, with hundreds of bays, inlets, and 
creeks studded with islands and walled with wooded hills. 
The harbour has an area of twenty-two square miles of 
water held in a rock-bottomed basin. There is a reef in 
the fairway, but since it runs parallel with the direction of 
26 


THE METROPOLIS OF THE ANTIPODES 


incoming and outgoing vessels, it is an advantage rather 
than a drawback, for it divides the harbour into two 
deep-sea channels. There are no large rivers depositing 
sand and silt to be dredged out. At the Heads the water 
is eighty feet deep, and at the wharves it is from thirty to 
fifty feet. The ships come right into the town, so that 
one can step ashore, walk three minutes, and be in the 
business section. 

Since coming here I have climbed to the top of the 
Public Works Building for a bird’s-eye view of the city. 
This building is on the harbour in almost the centre of the 
town. Standing upon it one can see the great ocean 
steamers landing goods at the quays, the ships entering 
and leaving, and the little tugs and ferries moving this 
way and that. 

Looking over the city I noticed that its buildings cut the 
skyline like the teeth of a broken saw, one now and then 
extending for many stories above its neighbours. There 
are indeed three Sydneys—the fast-disappearing city of 
the early governors, with its gabled cottages and brick 
houses; the Sydney of a later time with the ugly archi¬ 
tecture of the Victorian era; and the modern, up-to-date 
Sydney, which reminds me of an American city. It has 
buildings of the skyscraper type, though not so high as 
ours. Many of the houses are built of yellow sandstone 
taken from local quarries. 

Sydney covers a large area. Its streets wind about like 
those of Boston, and it is facetiously said that the place 
was originally laid out by a bullock driver with a boom¬ 
erang. The city is noted for its excellent wooden pave¬ 
ments, which, according to our consul here, will last for 
ten years without repairs. Some time ago part of the 
27 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

pavement of George Street, upon which are some of the 
chief business houses, was taken up. The blocks were as 
good as when laid eleven years before, save that they had 
been worn down about one fourth of an inch. These 
blocks are of eucalyptus wood dipped in boiling tar and 
laid on a foundation of cement. They are fitted as closely 
as a parquet floor, and are so smooth that three-ton loads 
can be hauled over them by one horse. Paving blocks 
of the Australian eucalyptus are now used by some cities 
of Europe. 

One of the most interesting rides I have had in Australia 
was my trip from Brisbane to Sydney. This takes one 
through the better parts of the states of Queensland and 
New South Wales. The road-bed is smooth and the cars 
are about like those of the United States except that there 
are no Pullmans until the boundary of New South Wales 
is reached. There is no baggage checking system such as 
ours, although the traveller is given a receipt for his 
trunks. The first-class car in which I rode was divided 
into compartments with cushioned benches under the 
windows. 

The scenery on this trip is worth noticing. A part of 
the way is over mountains and across rolling grazing lands. 
Some of the ride was through forests of eucalyptus trees, 
always and in all their numerous varieties called “gums” 
by the Australians. The leaves of the trees seemed to me 
to hang down as though in mourning and most of them 
had lost half their bark. The old bark was black and 
hung in long streamers down the trunks like dishevelled 
hair, while the new bark, white or silver-gray, looked 
very pretty by contrast. 

In some places there were groves of dead trees. They 
28 


THE METROPOLIS OF THE ANTIPODES 


had been ringed with the axe to kill them for clearing and 
stood stark and gray without leaves or bark. In the glare 
of the bright sun their limbs looked like clean and well- 
polished bones. A dead Australian forest is a veritable 
skeleton forest, the deadest-looking thing in nature. 
Where the trees have been felled the stumps are perfectly 
white, the logs lying on the ground are white, and the 
whole makes one think of a bone yard. 

When we passed over the Darling Downs we travelled 
for miles across green fields as flat as a floor surrounded 
by wire fences, which enclosed great flocks of fat sheep 
and herds of sleek cattle. On the ploughed lands the soil 
was as black as that of the Nile Valley and the dark 
ground looked soft and velvety in the brilliant sunlight. 
We crossed tracts each of a hundred acres and more of 
luxuriant alfalfa, and again went through fields where the 
green blades of wheat were just poking their tips up 
through the dark earth. Where a stream had made a 
deep cut I could see that the rich top soil was many feet 
in depth. 

There were but few farm outbuildings, no big barns, 
and no farmhouses of any great size. The homes were 
one-story cottages of wood painted yellow and roofed with 
galvanized iron. In spite of Australia's huge forests, 
wood is still expensive and galvanized iron is largely used. 
Most of the houses had big round iron tanks on their 
porches to catch the rain from the roofs. Many had 
galvanized iron chimneys, and a few were built entirely of 
this material, which is imported from England. 

I noticed that some of the cottages were set high up on 
iron piles capped by iron saucers with rims turned down, 
in the same way that the American farmer protects his 
29 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

granary from the rats. The upturned saucers are used to 
keep out the white ants which will devour almost any wood 
or leather they can get hold of. In tropical Queensland 
the piles have another advantage; for they permit a cir¬ 
culation of air under the houses, cooling the floors. 


30 



Bondi Beach, near Sydney, is the resort of thousands. Though some¬ 
times accused of overdoing it, the devotion of the Australians to outdoor 
pleasures has helped make them a healthy, vigorous people. 









The water traffic of Sydney harbour centres at the Circular Quay, 
where all the ferries dock, and the street-car lines converge. The ferry 
system is one of the largest and most efficient in the world. 



On the narrow neck of land separating Sydney harbour from the ocean 
is Manly Beach, which divides honours with Bondi as a place for surf bath¬ 
ing. On the hills some of the wealthy business men have their mansions. 








CHAPTER VI 


WALKS ABOUT SYDNEY 

C OME with me for a walk through the city of 
Sydney. The sun is hot, but the porticoes of 
iron and glass, built out over the sidewalks, will 
protect us from its rays. We stroll by great 
stores with fine window displays, and find we can buy 
almost anything here that is to be had in New York. 
The prices are marked in pounds, shillings, and pence. 
Some of the department stores sell several million dol¬ 
lars' worth of goods annually and employ from five hun¬ 
dred to one thousand clerks. Such stores do a big mail¬ 
order business with the people on the sheep stations and 
farms of the "back blocks.” 

One feature of Sydney is the numerous arcades that are 
cut through from one street to another and lined with 
stores. They are ceiled with glass, paved with tiles, and 
decorated with tropical plants and flowers. They are de¬ 
lightful quarters in which to shop during the heat of the 
day. 

The principal artery of the business section is Circular 
Quay, where the many ferries to the suburbs move in and 
out with their thousands going to and from work. The 
main streets of the down-town district lead to it. On 
Macquarie Street is the entrance to the Government 
House, where the governor of New South Wales resides. 
This thoroughfare was named for a stern old administrator 
3 * 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

of colonial times who used convict labour to put up the 
Parliament House and other buildings, many of which are 
still in use. Pitt and King streets are lined with handsome 
stores and office buildings. Above Circular Quay are 
great concrete wheat elevators with a capacity of six 
million bushels, which were erected not long ago under 
American supervision. 

Sydney has big insurance buildings, bank buildings, 
excellent clubs, and many hotels. The two largest hotels 
are the Australia and the Wentworth, which have the 
features of the best American and European houses. The 
prices are about the same as in the United States, though 
at first they seem cheaper. The extras make up the 
difference. There are small hotels in every block, but 
most of these are merely saloons, or public houses, with a 
room or so for rent to conform to the law providing that 
liquor shall be sold only at places offering board and lodg¬ 
ing as well as drinks. 

There are some splendid public buildings. Take the 
town hall, for example. It is a magnificent stone struc¬ 
ture in the heart of the city, containing a pipe organ, 
which is the largest south of the Equator, and a hall seat¬ 
ing five thousand people. Some years ago the city of 
Melbourne bought what was then the largest organ in 
Australia. But Sydney was, of course, bound to beat 
Melbourne, and bought a bigger one. Her organ cost 
eighty-five thousand dollars, and has several thousand 
pipes. 

Other fine structures are the Public Works office and 
the buildings of the various state departments. On 
George Street is the Victoria Market, put up at enormous 
expense to serve the whole city. But it did not succeed 
32 


WALKS ABOUT SYDNEY 


and has now been turned into offices. Throughout the 
city and suburbs are a number of well-regulated municipal 
markets. 

In the down-town section is the office of the Sydney 
Bulletin, the most widely read paper in the Common¬ 
wealth. This bright pink weekly has been called a “ cross 
between the London Punch and the New York Nation,” 
for its contents are both grave and gay. But it also 
has a flavour peculiarly its own. For one thing, it is so 
full of slangy phrases that outsiders almost need a glossary 
to understand some of its paragraphs. In it “Banana- 
land” may stand for Queensland; “Apple Isle” for Tas¬ 
mania; the “Ma State” for New South Wales; “Fog 
Land” for Great Britain; the “Big Smoke” for London. 
Under the heading of “Aboriginalities” are paragraphs 
from correspondents throughout the country on matters 
relating to Australian place names, natural history, 
strange customs, and the like. The tone of the paper is 
often flippant, and, so the conservatives say, even ir¬ 
reverent and disloyal. 

Nevertheless, the Bulletin is doing much toward build¬ 
ing up an Australian literature, for its encouragement 
and prompt checks have kept going many a struggling 
young poet or journalist. It is the chief literary and 
dramatic paper of the country, and its so-called “red 
page” always carries able book reviews and criticisms. 
Politically, it is independent, although it inclines more 
to the Labour than to the Liberal view. Still, it does 
not hesitate at times to publish editorials denouncing 
the Labour leaders. It is Australian of the Australians, 
and is read in the towns and cities, in the scorching 
northern mining camps, in the remotest sand plains of 
33 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

the west, and in the isolated sheep stations of the 
“bush.” 

Sydney has as gqod lungs as any city of Europe. It is 
noted for its extensive park system. Moore Park contains 
more than three hundred and fifty acres, Centennial 
Park five hundred and fifty acres, and there are also the 
cricket fields, race courses, and fair grounds. One of the 
best zoos of the world is at Taronga Park on the north 
side of the harbour. Here cages have been largely dis¬ 
pensed with, and the animals are given as nearly as possible 
their native conditions and surroundings. The Botanical 
Gardens are on the spot where the early convicts raised 
their vegetables. 

Sixteen miles south of Sydney is the National Park, 
which contains more than thirty-three thousand acres, 
most of them covered with virgin forest. Convenient to 
the city there are also a number of sandy beaches where 
“surfing,” swimming, and fishing are enjoyed. At the 
Manly and Bondi beaches “surfing” is especially popular. 
It is the sport of expert swimmers, who throw themselves 
on boards on which the incoming waves dash them to 
shore. The pastime is borrowed from the South Sea 
Islanders and is especially adapted to the heavy surf of 
the Sydney beaches. 

The most interesting park in all Australia is the Domain. 
It is in the centre of Sydney and has magnificent trees, 
velvety lawns, and walks and drives of every description. 
The park is accessible to everyone; there are no signs to 
keep off the grass, and babies and grown-ups play and 
stroll upon it. 

Every Sunday afternoon the Domain becomes the forum 
of the people. Any one who wishes to preach or pray or 
34 


WALKS ABOUT SYDNEY 


talk politics has a right to set up his pulpit on the grass 
and toot for hearers. No one questions his doctrines, 
and he may say what he pleases. There are at least a 
score or more of such speakers here every Sunday, each 
with a crowd about him. There are lightning calculators, 
labour agitators, Socialists, preachers of every gospel and 
every creed, phrenologists and beggars, faith healers and 
cranks of all sorts. 

The crowd is a good-natured one, made up of all classes, 
but with working people in the majority. When I visited 
the Domain the other Sunday, there were at least twenty- 
five thousand persons there. I paused for a time at each 
group. The first was gathered about a lightning calculator, 
who talked a blue streak as his hand danced over a black¬ 
board, stopping only at intervals to sell books explaining 
how to learn the higher mathematics in three lessons. The 
next speaker was a temperance orator. He was criticizing 
the rich men and the officials of the city and denouncing 
the saloons. Beyond him was a Socialist, who demanded 
heavier taxes from the rich and a general division of prop¬ 
erty, and farther on was a Negro, who was preaching the 
end of the world in a marked Yankee accent. At another 
place a Salvation Army band was led by a woman with 
a sweet singing voice and a complexion as fair as that of 
a baby. 

About fifty feet from this crowd I saw a walking hos¬ 
pital in charge of a woman called “the Good Samaritan.” 
The old lady had thirteen invalids, each of whom was 
terribly afflicted. They were of all ages, from babies to 
threescore and ten—some lame, some halt, and some blind. 
They sat about in chairs on the grass while the Good 
Samaritan in their midst showed their sores and deformi- 
35 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

ties to the crowd and begged money for their support. 
She had a carpet laid at her feet and upon this the chari¬ 
tably inclined cast their pennies and sixpences. 

Near by was a blind man with a cracked voice and a 
fiddle, who sang and sawed for money, and farther over an 
orator haranguing about the big captains of industry 
in America. They were, he said, enslaving the Yankee 
labouring men, and would in time probably come over to 
place the yoke of bondage on the workers of Australia. 

All this discussion in the different parts of the park went 
on without commotion or trouble; every one said what he 
pleased and none bothered about what anybody said. 

Leaving the Domain, I walked back to the hotel, notic¬ 
ing the queer signs by the way. One was “ Lollies for 
Sale.” It was over the door of a confectioner’s store where 
all sorts of candies were displayed. “ Lollies” is the popu¬ 
lar word here for candies, and between the acts at the 
theatres boys go about through the audience calling out 
“Lollies, ladies! Lollies, gents! Does any one want a 
box of fine fresh lollies?” So, I suppose, America is in¬ 
debted to Australia for its “lollipops.” 


36 


CHAPTER VII 


THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE 

T HERE were large flocks in the days of the 
patriarchs, when Abraham and Lot had to 
separate to get new grazing grounds. It is 
written that King Solomon sacrificed one hun¬ 
dred and twenty thousand sheep when he dedicated 
the Temple at Jerusalem, and we know that Mesha, 
King of Moab, gave Jehoram, King of Israel, one hun¬ 
dred thousand lambs as tribute. We have read also of 
Job's “cattle upon a thousand hills." The sheep kings 
of those days must have had immense farms, but they 
were nothing in comparison with those of Australia. In 
the state of Victoria there are six sheep stations of more 
than one hundred thousand acres each; in New South 
Wales are nearly two hundred of like area, and Queens¬ 
land has ranches so extensive that one will support up¬ 
ward of one hundred and forty thousand sheep. In the 
whole Commonwealth there are eighteen estates carrying 
more than one hundred thousand head each. 

Yet, even at that, there are old timers who consider 
these farms small. In the early days, when land was taken 
up in great parcels at less than nominal rates, there were 
men who acquired tracts the size of the state of Rhode 
Island. James Tyson, one of the most noted of the stock 
kings, owned three million acres and died worth twenty 
millions of dollars, an unheard-of fortune at that time. 
37 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Samuel McCaughey, who came to Australia practically 
penniless in 1856, when sheep raising was on the decline 
because of the gold fever, picked up blocks of land and 
bought flocks of sheep until he finally had one million 
head, owned a million acres outright, and leased a million 
or so besides. At one shearing he clipped a million and a 
quarter pounds of wool. 

Nowadays the tendency is away from these enormous 
holdings. With a view to getting more people on the 
land, all the state governments have done something 
toward their reduction. Moreover, closer settlement fre¬ 
quently means greater production from the land, for the 
smaller holdings are not generally devoted to sheep alone, 
but are used for wheat growing, dairying, and other farm¬ 
ing as well. In districts where at one time a property of 
two hundred thousand acres was thought not too large to 
provide for one man and his family, five thousand acres is 
now considered a good pastoral proposition. Sometimes a 
five-thousand-acre farm, well cultivated and improved, 
pays better than two hundred thousand acres did in the 
past. 

The sheep ranches used to be merely wild lands, where 
flocks were grazed on the hills and valleys with a few shep¬ 
herds to watch them. The present sheep stations are 
more like farms. The land is fenced in great fields, or 
paddocks, of eight hundred acres or more. Some contain 
several thousand acres, and single paddocks may have 
from two to twenty thousand sheep. Our American con¬ 
sul at Sydney tells me of one station he visited, which had 
wire fencing enough to reach from New York to San 
Francisco, enough roads to make a highway from New 
York to Baltimore, and enough employees to populate a 
38 



In the great “back blocks/’ where sheep ranches of 100,000 acres are 
common, it takes days and even weeks for the bullock drivers and their 
teams to get the wool clip to the nearest railroad. 



The Australian sheep men have brought the Merino to its highest 
perfection and doubled the weight of its average fleece since the breed 
was first introduced. 






Though the snowfall is confined to a few isolated areas, the slopes of 
Mount Kosciusko, which is more than seven thousand feet high and the 
loftiest peak on the continent, are the scenes of real winter sports. 



Even about the winter’s ice on the mountain lakes of Victoria the trees 
are as green as in the spring, for the eucalyptus sheds its bark instead of 
its leaves and makes the country an “evergreen land.” 








THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE 


good-sized town. I have travelled over other stations 
quite as large, and I have been amazed at the vast extent 
of the fencing. 

In the state of New South Wales, where I am now writ¬ 
ing, practically all its thirty-four million sheep are kept in 
fenced paddocks. There are thousands of miles of wire 
netting put up to keep out wild dogs and rabbits. Millions 
of dollars have been invested in buildings, and the salary 
list of a great station may be as long as that of a depart¬ 
ment store. Sheep raising is by no means a cheap business 
and to make it pay everything must be carefully managed. 

It costs from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a year to 
run even a good-sized station and there are some ranches on 
which the annual expenses mount up to hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of dollars. Of late years wages have steadily in¬ 
creased, until the men are now paid from five to nine 
dollars a week with board and lodging. Each man re¬ 
ceives weekly about twelve pounds of meat, ten pounds of 
flour, and a quarter of a pound of tea, as well as other 
rations, so that every big farm must keep a store and a 
warehouse. Even the smaller stations have a dozen or 
more men in ordinary times, and at shearing season the 
hands are numbered by scores. Then there is the land 
itself, which, when taken in tracts of tens of thousands 
of acres, costs the purchaser or tenant a large sum of 
money. The rates for leases are different in the several 
states, but in all there are farms paying annual rents of 
thousands of dollars. 

The ranchers are called “squatters,” which in Australia 
is not a disparaging term, as with us. It was first applied 
to those who settled on unoccupied lands, and then to those 
leasing vast tracts from the government at nominal rentals. 
39 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Since these men often grew to be rich, the title became a 
complimentary one and it is now applied to stock-owners 
and graziers generally. 

The squatters are Jasons who have won a splendid 
Golden Fleece. Of the five hundred and fifty million 
sheep in the world, Australia has around eighty million, or 
more than any other country. Russia, Argentina, and 
South Africa come next, in the order named. Australia's 
yearly wool production runs to between six and seven 
hundred million pounds and her annual wool exports 
have been bringing her the sum of two hundred and 
fifty million dollars. Wool is her greatest single source 
of wealth. Her sheep also furnish exports of frozen 
mutton that in good years have increased her income by 
twenty-five million dollars. The annual exports of sheep¬ 
skins are sometimes worth fifteen million dollars, and sau¬ 
sage casings, made of the intestines of sheep and lambs, 
are sent overseas to the value of five hundred thousand 
dollars. 

During my stay here I have attended Sydney's annual 
sheep show. There were hundreds of fine animals 
from every part of Australia. More than half of them 
were entered in the fine-wool class, and the rest were fat 
sheep raised for mutton. Every sheep at the show was 
worth several hundred dollars, and some were valued at 
thousands. Among the latter was the ram that took first 
prize. It was a great barrel-shaped bale of wool with a 
pair of big horns at one end of it. The wool lay on the 
ram in folds and rolls, the skin apparently wrinkling 
itself in order that the animal might hold more. His 
ears were entirely hidden by the wool, which also came out 
three inches over the eyes, leaving only small holes for the 
40 


THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE 


ram to see through. I poked my finger into the fleece and 
could just touch the skin. The wool hung down in great 
bunches on the belly and the legs were covered clear to 
the hoofs. On the outside the fleece was of a dirty white 
colour, but when 1 pulled it apart I could see it was of a 
rich creamy white. The strands were spiral and springy 
and very fine. 

The Australian farmers pay more for blooded sheep 
than do those of any other country. It is not uncommon 
for a well-bred ram to sell for five thousand dollars and 
one has even brought more than thirty thousand dollars. 

The hundreds of sheep men at the show looked much 
like a crowd of Yankee business men. They were all 
landholders, and many had farms which would be con¬ 
sidered principalities in the United States, but some of 
which are looked upon as quite small here. For instance, 
at the dinner closing the event I asked whether the vice- 
president of the show had a large station. The reply was 
that he had not, for his holdings comprised only about 
sixty-five thousand acres. Another man pointed out to 
me owns two hundred thousand acres and another has 
half a million acres, all fenced. 


4i 


CHAPTER VIII 


IN THE GREAT WOOL MARKET 

S YDNEY is the chief wool market of Australia. It 
annually ships hundreds of millions of pounds to 
| Europe, Japan, and the United States, and it has 
some of the largest wool warehouses on the globe. 
Let us take a walk through one of them. We are in a 
great room covering many acres. It is roofed with glass 
and upon its floors are thousands of bales of wool, each 
as high as your shoulder and marked with the name of the 
station from which it came. All are wrapped in yellow 
bagging, but the tops are open and the white wool seems 
to have burst forth and to be pouring out upon the 
floor. 

In parts of the warehouse are mountains of wool which 
have been taken out of the bales, and in other places men 
are repacking the wool for shipment. Thrust your hand 
into one of the piles. Now look at it! It shines as though 
it were coated with vaseline and your cuff is soiled with 
the grease; for this is unscoured wool, just as it came from 
the sheep’s back. 

All of the Australian wool clip is sold at auction, and 
the sales are attended by wool buyers from England, con¬ 
tinental Europe, the United States, and Japan. We see 
many of them in the Sydney warehouses dressed in over¬ 
alls and linen coats to protect their clothes from the greasy 
wool. They go from bale to bale, taking notes of each 
42 


IN THE GREAT WOOL MARKET 


man's stock, in order that they may know how much to 
offer when it is put up at the Sydney Wool Exchange. 

The Exchange is near the wharves in the heart of the 
city. It is a long, narrow room, much like a chapel, with 
an auctioneer’s desk like a pulpit in one end of it. The 
various wholesale dealers or commission merchants are 
allotted different days on which they may auction off their 
stock, and on those days the buyers come to bid. As 
many as ten thousand bales are sometimes sold in one 
day, and single sales will foot up as much as three quarters 
of a million dollars. Cable reports are received as to the 
prices in the great wool markets over the world, and the 
excitement rises and falls with the quotations. 

I had a chat with one of the largest wool dealers. He 
told me that some years ago almost all the wool of Aus¬ 
tralia was shipped by the squatters direct to London, and 
there resold and reshipped. At present the greater part 
of the product is shipped to commission agents at the 
Australian ports, to which the textile-manufacturing 
countries send their buyers. 

The prices of wool vary according to quality, and the 
quality varies with the breed of the sheep and the part of 
the animal’s body from which it is clipped. The coarse 
wool sometimes brings only about eighteen cents a pound, 
but for the last ten years the price of the best wool has 
averaged forty-four cents a pound in Australia and has 
gone as high as a dollar a pound in London. Some flocks 
have won such reputations for producing fine wool that 
their fleeces always bring better prices. I have before me 
a list of some of the wool sales of one year, showing that 
certain wool growers got as much as five cents a pound 
more than the market rates. 

43 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Few people realize how many factors enter into the 
quality of wool and go to determine its value and use. 
The grading of wool is a science and must be done by ex¬ 
perts. It is taught in the agricultural colleges of Australia, 
and at Sydney there are night classes where the students 
learn about sheep and wool. They study the different 
breeds, and practise grading and classifying baled wool, 
which is sent to the school by the dealers. In apron and 
overalls, each student goes through the bales picking out 
the good and bad wool and sorting it according to quality. 
He is taught also how to shear sheep, how to scour wool, 
and, in fact, every process in the growing and marketing 
of the product. The English mills often send their young 
men to Australia to learn the business at first hand. Some 
years ago there was a blind buyer at Boston who operated 
with success, making his purchases by the touch and odour. 
He could tell not only the quality of the wool, but the sec¬ 
tion of the country or the part of the world from which it 
came. 

Because it is well adapted to dry climates, the Merino 
sheep is the breed preferred in Australia, although the 
strain is modified by cross-breeding to suit different con¬ 
ditions. The sheep on the great plains country are of the 
large, robust type found to give the biggest returns on 
such areas. On the highlands, where the pasturage is 
lighter and the climate colder, a small Merino is raised 
that yields an extra fine fleece. In the western part of the 
state of Victoria is still another type, which produces the 
best Merino wool in the world. Upon this wool certain 
mills in Europe, America, and Japan are absolutely de¬ 
pendent for the manufacture of some of their goods. 

Wools differ in their wave or curl and in other partic- 
44 


IN THE GREAT WOOL MARKET 


ulars that will show up in weaving. The other day I was 
shown some Merino wool under the microscope. To the 
naked eye the wool, as it comes from the sheep, seems 
to be made of fine curly hairs. It is only by putting 
it under a microscope that one can see it differs from 
hair. Enlarged to the size of a lead pencil, each wool 
fibre is seen to be covered with sharp scales which overlap 
one another like those of a fish. The scales are so close 
together that there are several thousand of them on a 
piece of the fibre an inch long. The fibre is so fine that a 
pound of it can be spun into a thread one hundred miles 
long. When wool is spun and woven, the scales interlock 
and thus give the thread or fabric its strength. 

I have had a talk about the growth of Australia's wool 
industry with one of the old-time squatters, a man who 
has been raising sheep for many years and who has now 
about fifty thousand head in two different stations. 
Said he: 

“We have fewer sheep in Australia than we had ten 
years ago. Here in New South Wales we then had 
nearly forty million, and to-day we have approximately 
thirty-three million. We have lost some by drought and 
some by overstocking, and have now just about what we 
can easily feed." 

“Where did your first sheep come from?" I asked. 

“They were brought over from England by the con¬ 
victs," was the reply. “When Captain Phillip came here 
in 1788 he brought twenty-nine sheep and other live stock. 
These sheep did very well, and a few years after that Cap¬ 
tain Macarthur started the movement to make a sheep 
country of Australia. Macarthur was a military man 
with a scientific bent. He had a farm near Sydney 
45 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

and experimented in crossing some East Indian rams and 
Irish ewes, and as a result produced wool better than that 
of either of the forebears. He then experimented with the 
Merinos. You know, perhaps, that up to that time the 
finest wool all came from Spain, which had always been 
noted as a sheep-breeding country. Hoping to keep a 
monopoly of the trade in the best wool, the Spanish 
government forbade the exportation of any Merino 
sheep. But Captain Macarthur got some from the flock 
of King George III of England, who had originally se¬ 
cured them from the King of Spain, and also imported 
several Merinos from South Africa. 

“The British government gave him a grant of ten thou¬ 
sand acres of land on which to continue his experiments, 
and in a short time he proved that Australia could produce 
sheep as well as Spain and that Australian wool was as 
fine as the Spanish. It was long before the wool exporta¬ 
tions amounted to much, but the flocks steadily increased 
and the character of the wool improved, until now we raise 
more wool and better wool than any other country on 
earth.” 


4 6 



Australia’s greatest single source of wealth is sheep, of which she has 
more than any other country in the world, producing a half billion pounds 
of wool, besides vast quantities of mutton. 









Bush life is not all isolation and hard work. Every big station has its 
saddle horses, and both men and women are accustomed to long rides to 
dances, tea parties, or picnics. 







CHAPTER IX 


LIFE ON THE SHEEP STATIONS 

S OME of the Australian squatters and their man¬ 
agers live like lords. Their low, one-story 
| houses roofed with galvanized iron have a score 
or more rooms looking out over wide verandas 
that run along the front. There are many servants and 
the station is often more like the estate of a feudal baron 
than that of an ordinary farmer. Most of the sheep men 
are well educated, many are college-bred, and their homes 
show all the evidences of culture and taste. One squatter 
has a picture gallery that cost him one hundred and twenty- 
five thousand dollars, and others have music rooms and 
fine libraries. The leading Australian and London news¬ 
papers are to be found at all the stations. Whatever else 
is lacking, one is sure to see a well-read Sydney Bulletin 
lying about. 

Most of the stations have large stables, with horses for 
the use of the men employed on the estate and for pleasure 
riding and driving, as well. They are usually well supplied 
with guns and fishing tackle, and not infrequently have 
tennis, cricket, croquet, and golf grounds. 

Far from being slack about social forms, the people on 
the best sheep stations are more careful about matters of 
etiquette than those in the cities. It is the usual thing to 
dress for the evening, and, although there may not be a 
stranger within fifty miles, the men will appear night after 
47 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

night in dinner coats and the ladies in decollete gowns. 
In travelling through the country every gentleman car¬ 
ries a dress suit with him: If he goes away from the rail¬ 
road he usually tucks his evening clothes in his saddle bags 
or in the back of his automobile. 

No matter how far out in the country they may live, 
both men and women pay a great deal of attention to dress, 
and on some of the stations a hundred miles from nowhere 
the latest fashions are as much in demand as in the Aus¬ 
tralian metropolis. Many of the belles of the Queens¬ 
land “bush” come regularly to Brisbane and carry back 
wardrobes to astonish their rivals. The fair country girls 
of New South Wales get their fashions from Sydney and 
those of Victoria send to Melbourne for new clothes once 
or twice a year. A great deal of ordering is done by mail. 
One reads a good deal about the loneliness of the life in the 
“bush,” or “out back,” or “in the back blocks,” as the 
rural districts of Australia are called here. But it is my 
observation that, except in the most sparsely settled areas, 
the station dwellers have a social life of their own. For 
one thing, they have become used to the great distances 
and make nothing of visiting trips that we should consider 
long journeys. It is not uncommon for a young man or a 
young woman to ride or drive fifteen miles to take a cup of 
tea with a friend. At the dances, guests come from forty 
and fifty miles around, dance all night, and then start back 
at daybreak. The stations are noted for their hospitality. 
When a caller arrives, whether friend or stranger, everyone 
takes it for granted that he will stay overnight. 

The automobile has worked wonders in both the social 
and the business life of “outback” Australia. Long in¬ 
spection journeys or trips to town are now easier mat- 
48 


LIFE ON THE SHEEP STATIONS 


ters than when horses were the sole means of getting about. 
A homestead may be one or two hundred miles from the 
nearest railroad station, but the owner thinks little of run¬ 
ning in to take the train for a business trip to the city. 
Sometimes, of course, the country is soaked with rain and 
the motor cars must be laid up for a few days. But, in 
general, the automobile has replaced other vehicles and is 
considered an absolute necessity. This is especially true 
for those who run several stations. I have heard of one 
man, for example, who has five ranches at an average of 
seventy-five miles apart. Two of these he visits every 
week, while he gets around to the others at least twice a 
month. He keeps a car on each of the properties as well 
as one at Melbourne, where the stock and wool are mar¬ 
keted. His bill for gasoline, oil, and repairs is more than 
five thousand dollars a year, but he considers this merely 
necessary overhead, as he says he could not well carry on 
his business without the cars. 

Saddle horses are still indispensable on the big farms, 
however, and there seems no likelihood that Australia 
will ever stop breeding the fine horses for which she is 
famous. Besides, these people are racing enthusiasts, and 
there is great rivalry between the stables of many of the 
sheep men. Every town has its track, to which the 
station men come from a hundred miles around whenever 
there is a race meeting. 

The big stations are often owned by syndicates or 
wealthy men living in Sydney or some other city, the 
ranches being in charge of managers, some of whom started 
in as “jackeroos.” “Jackeroo” is the name given the 
young man who begins as a ranch hand with the idea of 
learning the business. I n the old days he was frequently a 
49 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

well-born young Britisher sent out ostensibly to gain ex¬ 
perience in sheep raising, but really to be kept out of the 
way of mischief at home. 

The “jackeroos” were divided into classes, each with 
its special nickname. The “gold tail” paid sometimes 
as much as fifteen hundred dollars for the privilege of 
watching the sheep and learning how to handle them. 
He usually stood well with the proprietor and had some¬ 
thing of a place in society. The “silver tail” paid nothing 
and, as a rule, got nothing except experience, while the 
‘'copper tail” was paid a small stipend for his work. 
The “experience” of the “gold tails” usually consisted in 
hunting, galloping at breakneck speed over the vast 
plains, horse racing, and making love to any attractive 
girls they could find. After a year or two some re¬ 
turned to Old England. But many stayed on and be¬ 
came real sheep men, winning their share of the Golden 
Fleece. 

To-day the “jackeroos” are sober and serious young 
fellows, mostly sons of overseers, managers, and small 
graziers, who get wages from the start. Their status 
differs from that of the other station hands only in their 
having separate living quarters and, on some ranches, eat¬ 
ing at the owner’s or manager’s table. 

A big sheep station nowadays is, as 1 have said, a large- 
size business proposition, requiring competent managers 
and overseers. On the more important stations there are 
bookkeepers and storekeepers. Nearly every one has its 
blacksmiths and carpenters, its gardeners, hostlers, garage 
men, and men of all work. The managers are skilled men 
who get high salaries, for the station’s profit depends 
largely upon them. They are usually expert sheep 
50 



Like the men, the women on the sheep stations are much out of doors, 
and many of them have in times of necessity taken over the management 
of great flocks. 





Shearing sheep is done with machine clippers, which are quicker than 
hand shears, less wasteful of the wool, and not likely to wound the sheep. 
A good workman will shear one hundred sheep a day. 



Australia supports sixteen sheep for every person in her population. 
Millions of acres of land unsuitable for farming or cattle furnish sufficient 
pasturage for sheep. 










LIFE ON THE SHEEP STATIONS 

breeders and are always trying to improve their stock. I 
know of one manager, for instance, in charge of fifty thou¬ 
sand sheep, who asserts that he has increased his wool crop 
more than seventy-five thousand pounds a year by devel¬ 
oping sheep that yield heavier fleeces. At an average of, 
say, thirty cents a pound, an additional seventy-five thou¬ 
sand pounds of wool would mean twenty-two thousand 
five hundred dollars a year more profit, or enough to 
pay the salary of an expensive manager several times 
over. 

I might be inclined to doubt this manager's claims had 
I not learned from government officials that the average 
weight of the Merino fleece for all Australia has been in¬ 
creased by three pounds. This is largely the result of 
expert breeding. Some of the best fleeces now run to 
eight and nine pounds each. 

The sheep-station men who lead the most lonely lives 
are the boundary riders. They go along the fences day 
after day and see that the gates are closed and everything 
is all right. They spend their time in the saddle, riding 
forty, fifty, and sometimes a hundred miles daily. They 
carry their blankets with them and sleep on the ground, 
hobbling their horses beside them. 

The real aristocrats of the sheep business are those who 
clip the wool from the animals' backs. Sheep shearing is 
almost a profession in Australia. There are thousands 
who do nothing else, and they form one of the most im¬ 
portant classes of Australian workmen. In the old days 
the sheep shearer was dependent on the wool growers, tak¬ 
ing work wherever he could get it and living in any kind 
of quarters the station might see fit to give him. But this 
has changed, and now he dictates terms to the sheep men, 
5i 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

with special laws in every state to back him up. The em¬ 
ployer must provide decent accommodations and had 
best handle the men with gloves, or else he will have to 
reckon with the shearers' union, one of the most powerful 
in the Commonwealth. When shearing time comes, the 
squatter signs a contract, made out according to a pre¬ 
scribed form; and, as a rule, this agreement is rigidly lived 
jUp to by both parties. One of the union rules most strictly 
enforced is that no shearer can be compelled to shear wet 
sheep. Yet, if he has arrived in the station and finds the 
sheep wet, he must be paid for the time he waits for their 
wool to dry out. This is sometimes a hardship for the 
employer, for even in dry seasons the heavy fleeces ab¬ 
sorb considerable moisture. 

The season lasts for nine months. Gangs of shearers 
start in Queensland, where it is warmest, and then work 
their way south from station to station until they reach 
the island state of Tasmania. From there some of the 
shearers go over to New Zealand, which has a still later 
season. 

Every station has its shearing shed, with barracks for 
the men. The shearers furnish their own food, buying it 
of the squatter at wholesale prices. Each gang of shearers 
has its own cook, and they usually live very well. 

In the past many of the shearers were drunkards. 
They would work at a station until the job was completed, 
and then take their wages to the nearest public house and 
there consume them in liquor. Sometimes, they would 
hand their money over to the saloon-keeper and tell him to 
keep an account and put them out when the money was 
gone, a bargain promptly fulfilled by the publican. To¬ 
day many of these men are frugal and temperate. They 
52 


LIFE ON THE SHEEP STATIONS 


shear for a few years, getting a thousand dollars or more a 
season, and then invest their savings in stock of their own. 

Nowadays the sheep are practically all sheared by ma¬ 
chines, somewhat like a barber’s clippers, which are run 
by steam, compressed air, or electricity. The clippers are 
fastened to a flexible tube like that connecting a dentist’s 
drill with its motor. They consist of little knives which 
move backward and forward over each other at the rate of 
two thousand times a minute and cut through the wool as 
a hot knife cuts through butter, taking it off more smoothly 
and cleanly than by hand. I have seen sheep shorn in 
this way so that their skins were as smooth as the nap of 
fine cloth, and as they scampered off they seemed to be 
dad in soft, white, velvety coats. The managers tell me 
that, as compared with shearing by hand, the machines save 
from a quarter to a half pound of wool per sheep, and that 
there is less danger of cutting the skin than in hand shear¬ 
ing. The average number shorn by each machine is a 
little more than one hundred per day. Some men can 
shear more than one hundred per day by hand, and one 
man is known to have cut the wool from three hundred 
and twenty-one sheep in one day with a pair of hand 
shears. 

After the wool is shorn it is sorted according to the part 
of the animal from which it came. On some stations it 
is put up in bales of three hundred and ninety pounds. 
Getting the wool to market is a considerable item in the 
station’s expenses, especially if it is situated far from a rail¬ 
road. While motor trucks and tractors are coming into 
use, much of the clip is still hauled on carts drawn by 
oxen. Some carts will carry ten tons, a yoke of eight or 
ten oxen being used to pull them. 

53 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

The bullock drivers, or "bullockies,” as they are called 
in this land of nicknames, are familiar figures in Australia's 
sheep country. Many of them have no other homes than 
their great, creaking carts, and these often form the homes 
of their families as well. Such outfits sometimes even in¬ 
clude goats to furnish milk on the way. 

The "bullockies” spend their lives crawling along the 
lonely roads behind their slow-moving oxen. In the back 
blocks they will tell you stories of big loads and record 
trips. One bullock driver hired a brass band to meet his 
biggest load of wool at the edge of the railroad town, which 
he entered with a flourish that brought all the population 
out to do him honour. A New South Wales "bullocky" 
drove a team of forty-two oxen ninety-two miles with a 
load of one hundred and forty-four bales of wool. His team 
was yoked four abreast and they were kept on the move 
by the cracks of a whip loaded with ten pounds of shot 
to weight the lash. Their driver probably used also a 
steady stream of the profanity for which all Australian 
"bullockies” are noted. 

Another character of the life of the sheep stations is the 
"sun-downer," a tramp whose like I have not met in any 
other part of the world. He will not work, but he travels 
about on foot from station to station, carrying a can for 
making his tea and a blue blanket for a bed. From the 
colour of his blanket he is sometimes called a "humping 
bluey.” 

When the "sun-downers" arrive at a station they call 
upon the manager, demand food, and always get it. They 
are so common that custom has fixed their ration at one 
pound of flour, half a pound of sugar, and two ounces of tea. 
In some places little shanties have been put up to accom- 
54 



Many a sheep station is a community in itself, with its carpenter and 
blacksmith shops, its laundry, and its outlying houses and native huts 
clustered around the dwelling of the owner or manager. 



From the time he can be lifted to a horse’s back, the Australian is an 
enthusiast about riding and racing. Even a small meet may be the signal 
for a general holiday and an exodus from work. 







The boundary rider is much away from home, spending his days in the 
saddle and many of his nights in the open. It is his job to see that the 
rabbit fences are intact, the gates closed, and the flocks secure. 







LIFE ON THE SHEEP STATIONS 


modate them overnight. Some of these tramps are men 
who have made a failure in Australia, but many of them 
are rovers from all over the world, ship deserters, and ad¬ 
venturers, who, after a season or two, move on to some 
other land. 


55 


CHAPTER X 


RABBITS AND DINGOES 


S IR HARRY LAUDER tells a story of a Scotch¬ 
man visiting a farm in the Australian back blocks. 

I Said he to the farmer: 

“I notice that you're Scotch.” 

"Yes,” replied the farmer, "and my wife, too.” 

"I dare say,” said the visitor, "there are many Scotch 
people in these parts.” 

"Yes,” was the answer, "we have quite a lot of Scotch 
folk, but that isn't our real trouble—it's rabbits /” 

When the Australian stockman has a nightmare, he 
dreams of a rabbit, the pest of the Commonwealth and 
the terror of the pastures. There are tens of millions of 
rabbits all over the country, and but for the constant 
warfare against them they would eat up all the grass 
of Australia. Hundreds of stations have been ruined 
by them, and the larger places employ men to do nothing 
else but destroy them. Some of the rabbiters kill an aver¬ 
age of four hundred rabbits a day. Yet those that sur¬ 
vive cost Australia countless millions of dollars, and the 
end of the plague is not yet in sight. 

Enormous rewards have been offered for a method of 
exterminating the pests. The government of New South 
Wales once promised one hundred and twenty-five thou¬ 
sand dollars to any one who would suggest or invent a 
means for their extermination throughout the state. The 
56 


RABBITS AND DINGOES 


reward was never claimed, and the rabbits breed and breed 
and never stop breeding. A pair will produce six litters a 
year, and each litter will average five rabbits. As soon 
as the bunnies are six months old they begin to breed, and 
in five years a single pair will increase to ten million pairs. 
One can gain some idea of what this means from the fact 
that every family of seven rabbits will eat as much as one 
sheep. 

The man who first brought rabbits to Australia was a 
squatter near Melbourne who wanted something to re¬ 
mind him of home. Besides, he thought hunting wallabies, 
kangaroos, and wombats was poor fun in comparison with 
the good old English sport of “chasing the hare.” He 
soon found, however, that hunting rabbits was a serious 
business. They multiplied so rapidly that his station was 
overrun. His pasture disappeared, and do what he could, 
they increased by thousands. They eventually cost him 
more than two hundred thousand dollars in loss of stock, 
in addition to the money he spent in his attempts at their 
destruction. 

Among the best methods of controlling the pest are 
poisoning, fencing, and the paying of bounties. In poi¬ 
soning, coarse bran saturated with phosphorus is some¬ 
times sown in furrows, and so covered that stock will not 
get it, though the rabbits will burrow for it. The great 
drawback of this method is that it also kills numbers of 
insect-destroying birds. 

Another system works well in dry seasons and in areas 
where water is scarce. Tanks, water holes, and dams are 
surrounded with wire netting, and troughs of poisoned 
water are placed outside. Often the trough, too, is en¬ 
closed in wire with a hole in it just big enough to let in a 
57 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

rabbit. In this way, the bodies of the poisoned rabbits 
can be collected, skinned, and burned. It is dangerous to 
leave the dead animals to dry up in the sun where stock 
grazes, for when grass is scarce the cattle will eat the car¬ 
casses for the sake of the salt in them. This method, too, 
exterminates numbers of insect-eating birds, so it has its 
disadvantages, though it does kill thousands of rabbits. I 
have heard that in one of the drought years, when the 
rabbits were more numerous than they are now, three mil¬ 
lion were poisoned at a single water hole. 

But fencing and bounties have proved still more effec¬ 
tive than poisoning. The local boards in infested dis¬ 
tricts pay millions of dollars for rabbits killed, and states 
and individuals spend millions on fences. According to 
the definition in the South Australian law the “ rabbit- 
proof ” fence must be of wire netting three feet high, set 
four inches into the ground, and topped by one strand of 
barbed wire. A “vermin fence,” which is put up to keep 
out “rabbits, wild dogs, and foxes,” is built like the rabbit- 
proof fence, except that it is four and one half feet high and 
has three strands of barbed wire at the top. These fences 
form a network over the land and make the stone-walled 
fields of New England look like mere chicken runs in com¬ 
parison. 

They are even built across the roads, so that travel¬ 
ling along the highways is often a dreary business of 
opening and closing gates in the rabbit fences. In some 
sections where there are gates about every five miles, the 
men passengers on mail coaches usually arrange “gate 
watches” between them. There is a heavy penalty for 
leaving one open. 

The extent of the fences is amazing. One built by the 
58 


RABBITS AND DINGOES 

government of New South Wales along the South Austra¬ 
lian boundary is three hundred and fifty miles long. 
Southern Queensland has one six hundred and twelve miles 
long. The state of South Australia has more than enough 
to make a girdle round the earth, and New South Wales 
has spent more than thirty millions of dollars in building 
her one hundred thousand miles of rabbit fence. 

As a result of these various measures, in the more closely 
settled areas the rabbit pest is pretty well under control 
and is now at its worst only in lands so poor that it is un¬ 
profitable to fence them. 

Moreover, the rabbit has in recent years been made to 
pay something for his keep. Frozen rabbits are shipped 
to the markets of Europe to the number of twenty mil¬ 
lions a year, and along Australian country roads one may 
see thousands of rabbit carcasses hung on fences awaiting 
wagons to take them to the packing houses for freezing. 
Rabbit skins worth some eighteen million dollars are an¬ 
nually exported for making felt hats, coat linings, and 
women's furs. 

In the early nineties, when the news of the discoveries of 
the great German bacteriologist, Doctor Koch, was being 
flashed about the world, Australia hoped that some bacil¬ 
lus might be found that would rid her of her rabbits. It 
was claimed that an assistant of Pasteur had found a cul¬ 
ture which would spread an infectious and deadly disease 
among rabbits, but from which other animals would be 
immune. Pasteur was invited out to Australia to try out 
this specific, but, as he was too old to undertake the voy¬ 
age, he sent a representative. A small island stocked with 
every kind of animal on the continent was handed over to 
this scientist but he failed to satisfy the authorities that 
59 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

his system of inoculation could be carried out without dan¬ 
ger to other animals, and so the wonder-working bacillus 
is still to be discovered. 

The states have had no better luck in introducing other 
animals to prey upon the rabbits. Some years ago West 
Australia turned two hundred cats into one of the rabbit 
districts, thinking they would exterminate the vermin. 
When the government inspectors went around a year 
later to check up results they found that the cats were 
living in the rabbits' burrows on the friendliest terms 
with their long-eared landlords. 

Foxes were brought in with the same object as well as 
for sport. But now that Reynard takes annual toll of 
about one hundred thousand sheep the foxes are shot, 
trapped, poisoned, and fenced against. In some places 
they are more dreaded then the wild dogs, or dingoes. 

When the Australian aborigines were first seen by the 
white settlers from England, they had with them many 
dogs, which they had trained to hunt. Some people 
claim that these dogs are native to Australia, some that 
they were brought in by Malay invaders from the north, 
and some that they are the descendants of a number of 
sick dogs left by a Dutch vessel on the shores of Australia 
in 1622. If the last theory is true, the climate must have 
agreed with the dogs, for they have multiplied and spread 
all over the country. To this day the southwest corner 
of Queensland and the northwest corner of New South 
Wales are badly infested with them. In a recent year 
dingoes and foxes were responsible for the loss of one 
hundred and forty thousand sheep in New South Wales 
alone. Strangely enough, the dingoes generally eat only 
the tongues of the sheep they kill. 

60 


RABBITS AND DINGOES 


The “dogger” employed by the station manager to get 
rid of the dingoes is usually the station rabbiter as well. 
As he makes his rounds to lay baits of phosphorized grain 
for the rabbits, he drags along at the tail of his cart a bit 
of mutton or other fresh meat. At intervals of a mile or 
so he leaves some meat with strychnine well rubbed into 
it. The wild dog will follow the trail to the bait, gulp 
down the meat, and shortly thereafter fall dead in con¬ 
vulsions. 

Each sheep station is represented on the nearest local 
county board, generally by the store-keeper. When the 
“dogger” presents the scalp and the tail of a dingo, joined 
by a strip of skin cut along the back, the store-keeper 
credits him with the sum of one dollar and eighty-seven 
cents. Three times a year vouchers are turned in to the 
secretary of the board and the employee receives his check. 
As a rule the station owner adds enough to make up the 
amount paid for each dingo scalp to five dollars, so that, 
whether he is a regular station employee or an inde¬ 
pendent worker, the Australian “dogger” makes a good 
living. 


61 


CHAPTER XI 


WATER FOR THIRSTY LANDS 

N O OTHER continent has as much dry land or as 
little rainfall as Australia. It has a great dry 
heart enclosed in green. More than two thirds of 
the country has less than twenty inches of rain a 
year, or about one third of the annual rainfall of New 
Orleans, and less than half the average for Boston or 
Washington. You may have heard of Yuma, Arizona, 
as one of the hottest, driest spots in the United States. In 
twelve months it gets less than ten inches of rain. Two 
fifths of all Australia is just as dry. 

Australia is the hottest country on record. I have 
ridden for miles astride the Equator in Africa, and have 
visited the arid wastes of South America and Asia, but I 
have never found heat to compare with this. Out in the 
country in the dry times one feels he is walking on a tin 
roof over the lower regions, and the people facetiously say 
that they have to feed their hens cracked ice to keep them 
from laying boiled eggs. And yet sunstroke is quite rare 
in Australia. 

Along the eastern side of the continent, from twenty- 
five to one hundred and fifty miles back from the Pacific 
Coast, is the Dividing Range. These mountains separate 
the fertile and well-watered coast regions from the drainage 
basin whose waters flow westward. They also rob mois¬ 
ture-laden winds from the Pacific of much of their burden 
62 



Irrigation promises to transform parts of Australia into orchards like 
those of our Northwest. Her fruits and farm products are already popu¬ 
lar in European markets, where the opposite seasons work to her 
advantage. 




Square miles of pasturage have been destroyed and many squatters 
made bankrupt by rabbits. The larger stations employ men solely to 
hunt and trap rabbits. A single hunter may kill four hundred a day. 



In a year Australia exports 20,000,000 frozen rabbits and $18,000,000 
worth of skins for making felt hats and women’s furs. Thus she makes the 
pest pay some of the cost of fighting him. 





















WATER FOR THIRSTY LANDS 

of water. West of the mountains vast plateaus begin and 
extend for two thousand miles, broken here and there by 
barren hills and rocky peaks. These plains lie close to or 
within the tropics, and all day long absorb heat which 
they give off by radiation at night. Ordinarily this would 
have the effect of drawing in a supply of moisture from the 
ocean, but on the Australian continent the heated interior 
is so immense that not enough moist air comes in to water 
it. 

The few rivers of the country are short and mostly un- 
navigable. There is, in fact, only one big river system, the 
Murray-Darling. From its source in the Australian Alps 
the Murray flows between the states of New South Wales 
and Victoria, then crosses the southeastern corner of South 
Australia. It is navigable for small steamers to a distance 
of twelve hundred miles or more from its mouth. Of its 
tributaries the most important are the Darling, which 
crosses New South Wales to join it in the southwestern 
part of the state, and the Murrumbidgee. The whole sys¬ 
tem waters a big basin on the eastern side of the continent 
in which are some of the best sheep farms of Australia. 

If you have looked at the map, you have noticed that 
even if Australia has but few rivers, there are a number of 
large lakes, especially in South Australia. But these 
bodies of water help matters little, for most of them are 
salt, and there are no fresh-water lakes to speak of on the 
whole continent. All the salt lakes are surrounded by flats 
of treacherous mud encrusted with salt. In dry years the 
lakes shrink; then a wet season fills them and the grass 
springs up all about them. 

Australia is not only a land of scanty rainfall, few rivers, 
and great heat. It is also a land of droughts. A district 
6 3 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

that has rejoiced in sufficient rain for one or two years and 
piled up wealth from its crops and its flocks may have to 
face a year or more of dryness that shrivels up the face of 
the earth. One need not go far in Australia to hear of the 
horrors of drought. Stockmen on their stations far off in 
the interior sometimes go crazy because the rain fails to 
come, and many have lost fortunes on account of dry 
weather. In such times, even a man with thousands of 
acres and tens of thousands of sheep may have to sit help¬ 
less and watch the animals die before his eyes. 

The droughts clear the land of everything green. The 
pastures become as bare as the roads, and the sheep 
stagger about, nosing in the dust for the seeds of grasses 
and trees. Sometimes trees are cut down to give them 
food. During one drought a sheep-raiser who had four 
thousand acres of land kept one hundred men busy cutting 
off the branches of his apple and other trees to feed the 
flocks. The sheep ate the leaves and even the twigs. 
This same man had another gang skinning dead sheep as 
fast as they died, and a third whose business it was to lift 
up the exhausted animals when they fell. This was to keep 
them from the carrion crows hovering about over them 
ready to peck out their eyes. During these droughts one 
may see the bodies of kangaroos lying here and there upon 
the plains. Thousands of rabbits die, and I have been 
told that even the birds drop dead from the trees and that 
their bodies line both sides of the fences. 

At intervals the whole continent suffers from terrible 
dryness. Every state except Tasmania has its drought 
history. The Riverina country of New South Wales is 
one of the best of the sheep-raising districts. It produces 
some of the finest wool and is noted for its excellent grass, 

64 


WATER FOR THIRSTY LANDS 

yet in times of severe drought it looks as though a fire had 
swept over it. Most of it is then as bare as a baseball 
diamond. There is not a green sprout or any sign of 
vegetable life to be seen. In one drought prevailing in 
parts of Queensland there were tracts strewn with dead 
sheep, cattle, and horses, and in some districts more than 
half the sheep were lost. At another time the wool clip 
of Australia was reduced almost twelve per cent, and the 
number of lambs born was cut down enormously. 

Ten of the thirteen big droughts recorded since 1880 
affected principally interior regions where the rainfall is 
normally less then twenty-five inches; but almost the whole 
continent suffered in the great drought of 1902-1903. 
Imagine what it would be like if all the United States from 
New York to San Francisco had no rain, and there was no 
green except on the mountains and in parts of New Eng¬ 
land. Then you will have some idea of conditions in 
Australia during this visitation. 

The great drought was the culmination of five unfavour¬ 
able seasons. Fifteen million sheep and one and a half 
million cattle died in a single year, while in the whole 
period sixty million sheep and four million cattle perished 
of thirst and starvation. Wheat production fell off to 
less than one third of the normal. For lack of water min¬ 
ing operations were checked. Many people left the coum 
try, the birth rate decreased, and the death rate rose. 

There was another general drought in 1919-1920, which 
was severe but not so bad as the one of 1902. Besides, by 
that time the people had learned more about irrigation 
and storing up fodder for grassless winters. 

The first irrigation enterprise in the country was under¬ 
taken by two brothers named Chaffey, who had had ex- 
65 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

perience in dry farming in California. They secured front 
the government of Victoria a big grant of land, which was 
then described as a “howling wilderness of spinnifex and 
mallee scrub/' and irrigated it from the Murray River. It 
has been little more than a generation since then. Where 
once was that wilderness there are now twelve thousand 
acres of irrigated land supporting a population of six thou¬ 
sand people. 

Other areas in northern Victoria, where streams are not 
available and artesian water is unfit for household and 
stock use, are irrigated by what is called the Wimmera- 
Mallee system. The state government has built storage 
basins in the mountains of the Wimmera River region 
from which small surface ditches are run down the slopes, 
sometimes for a distance of two hundred miles. By 
excavating basins and throwing dams across natural de¬ 
pressions, three reservoirs have been built holding fifty 
billion cubic yards of water. These tanks are filled once or 
twice a year. In some cases the government permits a 
limited use of this water for irrigation, but generally most 
of it goes to supply live stock and households. Victoria 
rents water at an unusually low price, the rate being from 
one dollar and twenty cents to one dollar and forty-four 
cents an acre foot. 

Three fourths of the irrigated lands of Australia lie 
along the Murray and its tributaries, and the most import¬ 
ant of the irrigation projects is a scheme for impounding 
the waters of this river. Backed by the Common¬ 
wealth treasury, the state governments of New South 
Wales, Victoria, and South Australia share the expense. 
Just below Albury on the boundary between New South 
Wales and Victoria they are building a dam to store one 
66 



Mildura is the centre of a fine fruit district, which a generation ago 
was a wilderness given over to rabbits. The success of this irrigation 
project started Australia on her policy of reclaiming arid lands. 



Victoria is fast clearing the scrub once infesting more than one fourth 
of the state. After the .growth is levelled and dried, it is burned off, culti¬ 
vated with stump-jump ploughs, and sown in wheat. 







Cattle are often saved by driving them from a drought area to a region 
where pasturage is available. The government maintains stock routes so 
laid out as to take in all possible water holes and streams. 



In parts of Australia much of the rainfall of a year may come in one 
violent downpour. The rainwater is caught in basins, or “tanks/’ dug in 
depressions and lined with cement. 






WATER FOR THIRSTY LANDS 

million acre feet of water, and another of half a million 
acre feet. In South Australia another reservoir will hold 
five hundred thousand acre feet. It is estimated that 
when completed these reservoirs will irrigate twelve mil¬ 
lion acres of land, or an area more than twice the size of 
the whole state of New Jersey. 

Victoria has, besides, some twenty irrigation projects 
of her own, the most important being the one in the Goul- 
burn Valley, which serves nearly nine hundred thousand 
acres, or an area greater than that of the state of Rhode 
Island. New South Wales’s principal scheme is the Mur- 
rumbidgee River project, which, when completed, will 
water two hundred thousand acres. 

For the Murrumbidgee scheme the government first 
bought a tract of about three hundred and fifty thousand 
acres. Then it started construction of the Burrinjuck 
Reservoir, a lake forty-one miles long formed by damming 
the river. The state surveyed the land, fixed routes for 
highways and the railroad, put in a tree nursery,established 
an experimental farm, made brick for houses, cut up the 
land into farm blocks, and got a planning expert from 
America to lay out the smaller towns and the two future 
cities of Leeton and Griffin. After twenty million dollars 
had been spent in this preparatory work the land was 
opened to settlers. 

Leeton and Griffin are now model cities. Each has a 
civic centre, broad straight streets for business, and pretty 
winding streets for residences, with a playground for chil¬ 
dren in every block. The factory districts are segregated 
and have railroad sidings so that transfers of freight may 
be easily effected. Butter, cheese, and bacon factories and 
fruit canneries have been erected and have done well. 

67 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

It was a bright day in Australia’s farming history when 
its supply of underground water was discovered. Its 
Great Artesian Basin is the largest known. It is bigger 
than the state of Texas, taking in a large part of Queens¬ 
land, ninety thousand square miles of South Australia, 
almost as much of New South Wales, and twenty thousand 
square miles of the Northern Territory. In this vast area 
there is little or no surface water, but under it lie lakes 
and streams, which supply many gushing wells. Two of 
Queensland’s wells flow two million gallons of water every 
day, while sixteen of them have a daily outflow of more 
than one and a half million gallons. Some are very deep. 
The well at Winton was sunk four thousand feet before 
water was struck, and in many the water has come from 
a depth of more than half a mile. In New South Wales a 
large number of bores have been drilled, and in South 
Australia artesian wells are multiplying rapidly. 

The water from the deep wells is often hot enough to 
scald a dog to death. It is slightly salt and contains some 
soda, but generally the sheep thrive upon it. In some 
cases, however, it is too full of mineral matter for the stock 
and can be used only for irrigation. 

The water from the wells is run to the pastures in pipes 
and ditches. The ditches are made with huge ploughs con¬ 
structed of logs in the form of a V, the end shod with iron. 
A team of eight or ten oxen drags the plough along the 
course desired for the stream. This makes a broad furrow, 
forming a canal at which the stock can drink. There are 
many canals of this kind from fifteen to twenty miles long. 
One of the best features about artesian water is the fact 
that droughts do not affect the supply. 

In some of the dry areas where there are no streams for 

68 


WATER FOR THIRSTY LANDS 


irrigation and where artesian water is not to be had or is 
not usable for either stock or irrigation, catchment basins 
and reservoirs have been built to conserve rain water. 
Sometimes these are dug down below the surface of the 
ground and roofed over to prevent loss by evapora¬ 
tion. In places skeleton buildings with large roof areas 
are set up to catch the rain. 

Moreover, the Australians are learning the lessons of dry 
farming and of laying up supplies against unfavourable 
seasons. Many of the stockmen, especially those with 
small holdings, pack away grass in pits dug in the ground. 
Salt is mixed in with the fodder to prevent its fermenta¬ 
tion and the whole mass is covered with earth to exclude the 
air. Treated in this way, the food will keep for years, and 
insure against loss of stock by starvation in a dry season. 
Nevertheless, the settler is not safe in starting to raise 
sheep or cattle unless he has enough capital to tide him 
over the lean years that are sure to come. 

As a rule, the dry spells affect different parts of the coun¬ 
try at different times. Hence the stock can be saved by 
being driven from stricken areas to places where the pas¬ 
turage is good. The dreaded droughts as well as the need 
of feeders to the railroads account for the stock routes that 
form a network over the whole country. 

In Australia, as in all countries, the cattle regions are 
in wide, unsettled areas. The cattleman has his herds 
“'way out back" in the “Never-Never Land" where they 
roam over unfenced tracts of vast extent. In the Northern 
Territory the average pastoral holding is two hundred and 
seventy-five thousand acres. The great events of the year 
are the “musters" of the “mobs" of cattle, when the stock 
is counted, sorted, branded, and selected for marketing. 

69 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Sometimes the trip to the nearest port or railroad will take 
as long as five months. The law demands that the cattle 
roads be kept open and that the stock be allowed to feed 
on a half-mile stretch on each side of the route as they pass 
along. It also requires that the cattle move at least six 
miles a day. 

In poor seasons, when water and forage are particularly 
scarce, hundreds of cattle may die of thirst or starvation on 
the way. Therefore the stock routes are laid out by the 
governments to take advantage of every known source of 
water. Streams, springs, water holes, and stagnant pools 
are marked out, for in the arid regions the stock will drink 
about any liquid they can get. Wells are dug and tanks 
for catching what rain may fall are constructed. New 
South Wales has seven hundred of these public watering 
places, which are under government supervision. South 
Australia's stock routes extend from Port Augusta to 
the borders of Queensland and Western Australia, and 
up into the northwest desert for seven hundred miles. 
Western Australia looks after two thousand miles of stock 
routes leading from inland stations to the cities on the 
southwest coast. 

One of the most marvellous things about Australia is her 
quick recovery from a drought. Within a week after a 
rain plains that have been reduced to dust, without a 
vestige of any growth for miles and miles, are covered 
with green and in a short time furnish luxuriant pasturage. 
The drought never kills the seeds of native grasses in the 
ground. Three years after the drought of 1902, New 
South Wales, which had lost seventeen million sheep, had 
increased her flocks from twenty-three million head to 
forty million and the number of her cattle and horses had 
70 



No Australian would think of going through a day without tea. Cattle 
men, sheep herders, bullock drivers, and even the “sundowner” carry it 
with them and “boil the billy” over camp fires. 






Unlike its rival, Sydney, Melbourne grew’according to plan. Collins 
Street, the main thoroughfare, and the other principal streets were laid 
out a mile long, 99 feet wide, and in checker-board patterns. 














WATER FOR THIRSTY LANDS 


doubled. By 1905 the number of sheep and cattle in the 
whole Commonwealth exceeded the figures for 1900. 

The Australians cannot be beaten for enthusiastic faith 
in their country, and some of them go so far as to tell 
me that droughts are a good thing. They say the soil 
must rest occasionally and that dry seasons, like ice and 
snow in cold countries, are simply Nature's methods of 
forcing the lands to lie fallow. 


7 * 


CHAPTER XII 


MELBOURNE 

I T WOULD surprise many Americans who think 
theirs is the only real country on earth to come down 
to Australia. Take the city of Melbourne. It is 
not so old as Chicago, and it is younger than any 
town of its size in the United States. In 1837, when 
Chicago was incorporated, Melbourne contained five 
wooden shacks and eight turf huts. To-day it is a magni¬ 
ficent city almost as big as Detroit. There is not a coun¬ 
try in Europe or a state of the Union but would be proud 
to own such a capital. 

The city lies at the bottom of eastern Australia, on the 
banks of the River Yarra, near where it empties into the 
Bay of Port Phillip. One can walk for six miles along 
the wharves and count forty bridges crossing the Yarra 
and other streams in the city and suburbs. Steamers of 
eight thousand tons, drawing twenty-three feet of water, 
can come right into the town, but larger vessels anchor 
at Port Melbourne three miles below it. 

In a bend of the river and close by the wharves is the 
million-dollar municipal market house. This is a three- 
story brick structure housing hundreds of stalls to which 
Melbourne housewives come to purchase their supplies. 
A part of the building is given up to storage rooms for 
butter, rabbits, chickens, and other things awaiting ship¬ 
ment overseas. 


72 


MELBOURNE 


Melbourne is built on a flat plain. It covers many 
acres and is well laid out on the checkerboard plan. 
The principal streets are ninety-nine feet in width. The 
best business blocks and public buildings are on Collins 
Street, which is the main thoroughfare. St. Kilda’s Road, 
which runs from the centre of the town past the Botani¬ 
cal Gardens and the official residence of the Governor- 
General of Australia, is one of the finest boulevards in 
the world. It was built to honour King George V, then 
Duke of York, when he came out in 1901 to open the first 
Federal Parliament. 

On all sides of the city are attractive suburbs, the most 
beautiful of which is Toorak, where the rich have their 
homes. Their handsome residences are set in large gardens 
and are generally hidden by high walls from the passerby. 
In the less pretentious suburbs the newcomer is struck by 
the number of one-story houses. The reason for this, as 
well as for the growing number of apartment houses in this 
and other Australian cities, is the difficulty of getting 
servants. 

Although it was decided at the beginning of this century 
to build the federal capital on a new site, Melbourne has 
remained for more than twenty years the “ temporary ” 
capital of the Commonwealth. When the states were 
federated there was hot rivalry between Sydney and Mel¬ 
bourne. Neither was willing for the other to become the 
national capital, so it was provided in the Constitution that 
a new city should be built, at least one hundred miles from 
Sydney, and that, pending the erection of the necessary 
buildings, Melbourne should be the seat of government. 

The site for the new capital was donated by the state 
of New South Wales. It is at Canberra, about two hundred 
73 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

miles southwest of Sydney. The architects of the world 
were invited to submit plans for the city, and the prize was 
won by Walter Burley Griffin, of Chicago. 

The World War interfered with the construction of Can¬ 
berra, and it has also been held back by much opposition 
to the great outlay of money involved. On his visit to 
Australia two years after the war was over, the Prince of 
Wales presided at the laying of the cornerstone of the 
Parliament buildings. Bridges and roads have been 
built, sewerage and water-supply systems have been in¬ 
stalled, and a meeting place for the Parliament has been 
provided. Nevertheless, it will be some years yet before 
the Commonwealth’s made-to-order capital is completed. 

As the capital of Victoria, Melbourne has the state offices. 
It has also city buildings and a town hall. These struc¬ 
tures cost many millions of dollars. One of them houses 
the splendid public library containing a quarter of a mil¬ 
lion books, and under the same roof are the museums of 
sculpture, technology, and ethnology, and an art gallery. 
In connection with the art gallery there is a travelling 
scholarship for art students endowed by the state. 

The town hall is a great structure of white freestone on 
the corner of Collins and Swanston streets in the very heart 
of the city. It is the home of the mayor and city officials, 
including the council, and it has also an amusement hall 
which will seat three thousand, where public entertain¬ 
ments are given at cost prices. For concerts, it has a 
thirty-five-thousand dollar organ, which, as I have said, 
was the largest south of the Equator until Sydney bought 
a bigger one. The city employs an organist to play it 
twice a week for the entertainment of the people, and 
any Thursday or Saturday one can drop in and listen to 
74 


MELBOURNE 


the music for an hour or so free of charge. Melbourne 
not only provides free concerts for its citizens, but reserves 
one section of its race track to which the public is admitted 
without having to buy tickets. 

The Australians believe that their cities should be run 
for the benefit of the people and they do not overlook any 
opportunity to this end. Melbourne owns its tramways 
and maintains all sorts of public institutions, such as mu¬ 
seums, picture galleries, and baths. It has numerous 
night schools and a working man's college with several 
thousand students. The city keeps up an aquarium and 
a good zoological garden. It has about six thousand acres 
set aside for parks and pleasure grounds, and its citizens 
have many organizations and clubs for outdoor amuse¬ 
ment. The Melbourne Cricket Club, which was founded 
about the time the city was begun, now numbers more 
than three thousand members. It keeps twenty men busy 
taking care of its property. Already more than half a 
million dollars has been spent on the nine-acre cricket 
ground, which is said to be the finest in the world. 

I wish I could take you out to one of the great meetings 
at Flemington Lawn, the Melbourne race course, which 
the people here think is the finest on earth. It has an area 
of about three hundred acres, most of which is covered 
with a lawn of thick velvety green. There are really two 
courses, one for steeplechase events and the other for 
running and hurdle races. The track, grandstands, 
and stables are all well built and equipped with the latest 
improvements. 

The inside of the ring, which is given up to the people 
who pay no admission, is usually crowded with workmen 
and their families. The grandstand, built on a hill at 
75 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

one side of the course, has the first-class seats, and directly 
behind it on the hill itself are equally good places, which 
can be had for lower prices. In any one of these situations 
the spectator has full view of the race from start to finish 
and need not lose sight of the horses for the tenth of a 
second. 

I have several times gone out to the races, which are 
held every Saturday afternoon during the season. They 
are attended by thousands. Flemington Lawn is a good 
place to see the people of Melbourne at their best. Every¬ 
one goes to the races—business men, public officials, and 
even the preachers, though I would not say that I saw any 
of the clergy place any extravagant bets. The crowd in 
the grandstand has as well-dressed and fine-looking men 
and women as one can see at any similar show the world 
over. 

People down here have a way of dating events by say¬ 
ing, “Oh, yes, that was the year So-and-So won the Cup.” 
They are referring to the Melbourne Cup Race, the chief 
sporting event of the South Pacific and one of the greatest 
of the whole world. Melbourne Cup Day, the first 
Tuesday in November, is a general holiday, and the city 
does little or no work during the week of this race. Flem¬ 
ington is crowded with a brilliant throng. Often one 
hundred and fifty thousand people attend, some coming 
from points three thousand miles distant. Nearly all 
bet, the women as well as the men. The bookmaker is 
in his element, and one hears many stories of crooked 
methods and thrown races, though how much truth there 
is in them I do not know. Clerks and shop girls go with¬ 
out lunches for weeks to save money to lay on the favour¬ 
ites. Office boys steal stamps and petty cash, and bank 
76 


MELBOURNE 


clerks are sometimes tempted beyond their strength to 
speculate with the funds under their hands so as to gamble 
on the great event. 

An attorney general of New South Wales, speaking of 
the Melbourne Cup and the other races so frequent 
throughout the Commonwealth, once declared that 

“. . . nine tenths of the embezzlements and the 

forgeries and the breaches of trust which come before the 
Australian courts are directly due to horse-racing and its 
concomitants.” 

But editors and preachers, votes in the hands of women, 
and state and Commonwealth legislation have so far been 
powerless to stop betting on the races. The gambling 
spirit pervades all classes of Australians, from the farmer 
who stakes everything on the freaks of the climate, to the 
legislator who helps put a radical law on the statute books 
with the feeling that the chances are even that it will work 
out all right. 

I should say that drinking is quite as much of a national 
vice of the Australians as gambling. I know of no 
country where it is more common. In many families it is 
usual to serve whisky and soda at afternoon teas, the men 
taking the whisky and the women the tea. Some of the 
people keep themselves “ soaked” a good part of the time. 
Scotch whisky is the favourite tipple and the customary 
way of taking it is to mix it with water and sip it. Ameri¬ 
cans once prided themselves on drinking their whisky 
“straight,” swallowing it down in one gulp, but here the 
same amount mixed with water lasts for an hour. A 
great many have whisky with their meals, and treating, 
or, as they call it here, “shouting,” is common. The 
man who drinks alone is thought to be mean, and in the 
77 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

smoking rooms of the hotels one sees men sipping and 
talking together from dinner until bedtime. 

There are no saloons here as we know them. To illus¬ 
trate: 

“ Is that big building a hotel?” I asked a Melbourne man 
one afternoon as we were passing one of the finest struc¬ 
tures of this city. 

“No,” was the reply, “I don't think it's a hotel. I 
think it is a coffee palace. Still, I heard the other day 
that its owners had bought out the right to sell liquors and 
so it may be a hotel after all.” 

“But what is a coffee palace?” I asked. 

“A coffee palace,” my acquaintance replied, “is where 
they keep everything that belongs to a proper hotel ex¬ 
cept the bar. A hotel is a place where liquors are sold; 
without the liquors it can’t be a hotel, and a coffee palace 
can’t sell liquor.” 

“What do you mean by the owners buying out the right 
to sell liquor?” 

“That is a part of our liquor-option law. Only so 
many places are licensed, and if a new place wants to start 
up it has to buy an old license or wait until one is given 
up. Liquors can be sold only at public houses, or hotels, 
providing board and lodging. However, it is true that 
many of the hotels have only one or two bedrooms to 
rent. They make their money from the bar.” 

Notwithstanding these restrictions, and the absence 
of the American type of saloon, I find that bars are even 
more frequent here than they used to be at home. The 
man who wants a drink can get it in any block, and if he is 
an Australian the chances are, nine out of ten, that he 
wants it. 


78 



The race horse is one of the national idols of Australia. Every one, 
from preacher to porter, goes to the races, nearly all bet, and the atten¬ 
dance at the Melbourne Cup sometimes numbers 150,000 people. 



The great white stone town hall contains a room with three thousand 
seats for public entertainments. The city employs musicians to give free 
concerts twice a week on its $35,000 organ. 












Until the completion of the made-to-order capital at Canberra, the seat 
of the Australian federal government, remains at Melbourne, where the 
Commonwealth House and Senate meet every year. 



Alexandra Gardens in the centre of Melbourne remind one somewhat of 
Boston Common and Central Park. A shack village when Chicago was 
incorporated, the city is now one of the fine capitals of the world. 













MELBOURNE 


One of the surprising things is the little account taken of 
drunkenness or drinking. No one seems ashamed of hav¬ 
ing contracted the habit, and many men refer as non¬ 
chalantly to having been drunk as you would to having 
had your dinner. 

Not long ago 1 was on a train in company with three 
Australians who were evidently old friends. One of the 
men said: “You see how much fatter I look. That fat 
comes from temperance. I have taken on flesh since 1 
stopped drinking. I used to drink five bottles of gin 
every week right along and often much more. About 
six months ago I tapered off and at once began to gain 
weight. Since then I have gained two stone in a month.” 

The other gentlemen contributed like stories of them¬ 
selves and their friends. They kept up the conversation 
until the train stopped at a station, when all went out for a 
glass of whisky and soda. 

To me one of the worst features of the liquor traffic 
in Melbourne and other Australian cities is the fact that 
the drinks are dispensed by women. The Melbourne 
girls are especially beautiful, and the town has the reputa¬ 
tion of having the prettiest barmaids of Australia. Some 
of them are witty and nearly all are charming, so that it is 
no wonder that the men like to come in for a chat and a 
drink. 


79 


CHAPTER XIII 


IN THE MARTS OF THE CITY 

M ELBOURNE is one of the best business cities 
of Australia, and to a large extent the money 
centre of the country. It has a number of 
rich men, its people are great spenders, and 
money is kept on the move most of the time. By no 
means all of it goes for good living. There are numbers 
of insurance companies, real-estate firms, and banking in¬ 
stitutions. The chief banks have branches in the state of 
Victoria and in all parts of the continent. 

Some of the stores are called universal providers, taking 
the place of our department stores. All have good window 
displays and they advertise in the spread-eagle Ameri¬ 
can way. One man boasts of having one million books 
in his stock, and fills the newspapers with rhymed effusions 
about his goods. His shop is called the Book Arcade, and 
it is a sort of department store, in which books are fea¬ 
tured. It sells also stationery, candy, and pictures, and 
in it you may get a tooth pulled or a photograph taken 
while you wait. As in Sydney, many of the big stores 
are in arcades from one principal street to another which 
protect the shoppers from the blazing sun in summer. 

Among the most interesting shops are those selling 
jewellery, for they give an idea of the wealth and the tastes 
of the people. There are quarts of diamonds and pearls 
displayed in the cases, and the windows are filled with 
80 


IN THE MARTS OF THE CITY 


rings, brooches, and precious stones. Among the most 
common of the jewels are Australian opals. They may 
be seen everywhere. I verily believe I have handled a 
half bushel of them since I came to the country. They are 
sold set and unset, and are cheaper than with us, although 
the better stones bring good prices. An opal the size of 
a small pea costs three dollars, while for fifteen dollars you 
can get one full of fire and as big as your sweetheart’s 
thumb nail. Like diamonds, the stones are sold by 
weight, at so much a carat. 

In walking through the business streets I see many 
curious signs. One reads: “John Jones, Fellmonger.” 
That is a fur store, as I can see from the ’possum, the 
platypus, and other skins in the window. The shop 
next door has the word “ Draper” above it. That is a 
dry-goods store, while the sign “Ironmonger” on the 
building over the way shows that it is a place for selling 
hardware. In Australia the druggists are called chemists, 
and a drug store is a chemist shop. Lumber dealers are 
“timber merchants,” and the lumberman is a “timber 
getter.” 

Besides what seems to an American their queer use of 
English, the Australians are even more addicted to slang 
than we are. Their most common ejaculation is “My 
word!” You hear this everywhere. It takes the place of 
“Mon Dieu!” in French, “Ach Gott!” in German, and 
“Oh, Lord!” in the United States. The Australian evi¬ 
dently thinks his word a better thing to swear by than the 
name of the Almighty. Among other slang phrases are 
the words “screw,” for salary or income; “narked,” for 
angry; “cush,” for comfortable, and “putting on side,” for 
putting on airs. If a man is assaulted by highwaymen 
81 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

and robbed he is “stuck up,” and if he has no money 
whatever, it is common to say he “has not a bean.” 
“Good iron” is an expression of incredulity at a prepos¬ 
terous story. People ask you to “hang up your horse” 
instead of hitching it. “To have” a man is to fool him or 
take him in. If a person fails “he has gone the bung,” 
and if he is well off “he is pretty well on.” We use the 
expressions “on the jump” or “on the go”; the Aus¬ 
tralian says he is “on the wallaby.” When a man acts 
foolishly we sometimes say “he is off his base”; with the 
Australian “he is off his pannikin.” An Australian girl 
does not primp, she “tittivates.” An Australian dude is 
a “toff,” a tramp is a “swagman,” “a humping bluey,” or a 
“sun-downer.” Luggage is always called “swag,” and 
the common word for food is “tucker.” 

As to Melbourne's business hours, the forty-four-hour 
week prevails generally. Most of the big stores are not 
open before half-past eight or nine; all except fruit and 
confectionery shops must close at six, and all are required 
to shut up for the half holiday every Saturday. Barbers 
and tobacconists may close half a day on Wednesday, in¬ 
stead of Saturday. Even the drug stores have to close 
on Saturday afternoons and on Sundays as well. 

Melbourne is called the Yankee city of Australia and 
its people pride themselves on being like us. They are 
considered the most enterprising of any people south of 
the Equator. I have been frequently asked if Melbourne 
did not remind me of home, or whether we have anything 
better of the same kind in the United States. 

Many Americans flocked here during the gold rushes of 
the early fifties and some of them stayed and bought prop¬ 
erty. Several of the finest business blocks are owned by 
82 


IN THE MARTS OF THE CITY 

Americans; for instance, the Equitable Life Insurance 
Company of New York has one of the best office buildings 
here. A great many fortunes have been made in Mel¬ 
bourne real estate. The romances of its land speculations 
are like those of New York and Chicago. The island of 
Manhattan was bought from the Indians for about a peck 
of beads, buttons, and trinkets; Chicago could once have 
been purchased for a pair of old boots. The Australian 
aborigines traded the site of Melbourne, including six 
hundred thousand acres surrounding it, for forty pairs of 
blankets, forty-two tomahawks, and a few knives, scissors, 
looking glasses, and shirts. The same ground is worth 
more than one hundred million dollars to-day. John 
Batman, the man who bought this tract, was not allowed 
to keep it. His claim was disputed by others, and a 
few months later the governor of Australia came down 
from Sydney, laid out the town, and sold off the lots at 
auction. 

That auction made fortunes for the successful bidders. 
There were about two hundred men present, and nearly 
all bought city lots of half an acre each. The first sold 
for $150 and another for twice that. One block of ten 
acres netted $2500. That area is now worth at least 
$ 1 5,000,000 and the value of many of the other lots has 
increased in about the same ratio. The net proceeds of 
the day’s sale were less than $ 20,000, yet to-day the same 
land is worth at least $40,000,000; that is, its value has 
increased just about two thousandfold, which is certainly 
a fair profit. The auctioneer was a man named Hoddle, 
who worked on commission. His fees for the sale were 
about $285, and he took them in land. He was awarded 
two lots in Elizabeth Street, which he lived to see worth 

83 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

$1,250,000. That was certainly one occasion when talk 
was worth money, for Hoddle must have received in the 
end hundreds of dollars for every time he opened his mouth 
to cry, “Sold.” 

This auction took place in 1837. From that time the 
town grew steadily. Within twelve months a hundred 
houses were built, and within five years it had six thousand 
inhabitants. It was incorporated in 1842. Ten years 
later nuggets of gold as big as your fist were discovered 
at Ballarat, some hundred miles back in the country, and 
Melbourne boomed as San Francisco did, and at just 
about the same time. 

Hundreds of thousands of men passed through the city 
on their way to and from the goldfields, and within ten 
years more than four hundred million dollars' worth of 
gold was sent into Melbourne for shipment to Europe. 
The town doubled and quadrupled in size. It soon 
reached the rank of a city, and kept growing until about 
1890, when it had half a million people. 

Then came a panic, which seemed for a time to be the 
ruin of Australia. But Melbourne was soon on its feet 
again and I agree with the people here who believe that 
their city is destined to become even greater as the 
Commonwealth grows. 


84 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE STATE-OWNED RAILWAYS 

I N MAKING the trip from Sydney to Melbourne, I 
was painfully reminded of the worst feature of rail¬ 
roading on this continent. At Albury, on the frontier 
between New South Wales and Victoria, I was 
routed out of my berth at daylight and compelled to 
change cars. Although the central government controls 
the telephone and telegraph services of Australia, the rail¬ 
roads are owned by the states, and since each has a differ¬ 
ent gauge for its tracks, passengers and goods must often 
be transferred. 

The lines in Queensland, Western Australia, and Tas¬ 
mania, which are not contiguous states, have a narrow 
gauge. The tracks in Victoria are five feet three inches 
in width, as are those of the main lines of South Australia. 
Only New South Wales and the Transcontinental line 
built by the Commonwealth government have the world 
standard gauge of four feet eight and one half inches. In 
going from Brisbane in Queensland to Perth in Western 
Australia one must change five times because of differing 
track widths, and this is one of the reasons why the 
thirty-five hundred mile journey takes practically six days. 
Such conditions cost more than time. For example, the 
transfer charges on freight between New South Wales 
and Victoria range from thirty to seventy cents a ton. 
Imagine what it would mean in the United States if 

85 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

passengers and freight had to be moved from one train to 
another every time a state line were crossed. 

Ever since the states formed the Commonwealth there 
has been much discussion of the unification of these con¬ 
flicting railroad gauges. This is certainly one of Aus¬ 
tralia’s greatest needs, but so far the expense has proved 
prohibitive. A commission of three eminent engineers, 
an Englishman, an Australian, and an American, recently 
reported that to convert all the existing lines in the Com¬ 
monwealth to the standard gauge would cost about two 
hundred and ninety million dollars. This would mean 
an expenditure of more than fifty dollars for every man, 
woman, and child in Australia. It has also been proposed 
to standardize the chief routes connecting the five state 
capitals on the mainland at a cost of about ninety million 
dollars, but just now even this seems more than the coun¬ 
try can afford. Yet the diversity of gauges imposes such 
a burden on Australian business that some day unification 
will have to come. 

At present there are about twenty-six thousand miles of 
railways on the continent, of which twenty-three thousand 
miles are owned and operated by the states, twenty-eight 
hundred are privately owned, and the rest are in the 
hands of the Commonwealth government. This is about 
one tenth the mileage of the United States, which has 
approximately the same area but twenty times as many 
people. Most of the Australian railroads are, like the bulk 
of the population, on the eastern side of the continent. 
The great tropical Northern Territory has only one rail¬ 
road, which is but two hundred miles long. 

In each state the lines are operated by one or more 
commissioners appointed by the cabinet. The Minister 
86 



Australian railroad tracks are laid on ties cut from her forests of euca¬ 
lyptus. One variety, the iron bark, is practically immune fiom fire, while 
the kauri, jarrah, and blue gum last for fifteen or twenty years. 





For years the governor of Western Australia in his palace at Perth 
could communicate with the rest of the Commonwealth only by ship or 
telegraph. Now the Transcontinental Railway connects his capital with 
the mainland. 



Despite the expense in handling, Australia still ships the bulk of her 
wheat in bags and on flat cars. Because of the dry climate, it is safe 
from rain but much is destroyed by rats. 








THE STATE-OWNED RAILWAYS 

for Railways directs legislation and answers questions in 
the state Parliament; but otherwise the commissioners 
have a free hand. Federal lines are managed by a railway 
commissioner for the Commonwealth. 

In Sydney I asked a member of the New South Wales 
railroad commission whether he thought government con¬ 
trol of the railroads was a good thing. He replied: 

“There is no doubt of it. The results have been so 
good that we are convinced that such management is for 
the best interests of the people. We are giving a better 
service at less cost than private roads could do.” 

“But how about the political end of the machine?” 
I asked. “ Do not the politicians try to manage the com¬ 
missioners and control the vote of your employees?” 

“No,” was the reply. “Our laws provide that we 
shall be absolutely free. The government does not dic¬ 
tate to the chief commissioner and his three assistants. 
We have our own staff of officials, whom we appoint, and 
no promotion can be made without our consent. We have 
about forty thousand employees in this state alone and 
we are careful to do them justice. We hold a court every 
other Wednesday, to which our men can appeal if they 
have grievances. There are many such appeals and about 
one third of them are settled in favour of the men.” 

“How about wages and hours of work?” 

“We have the eight-hour day and we pay higher wages 
than do the European railways. Our men are better 
treated than those of any railroad I know. They are 
under the civil service and no man can be removed except 
for cause.” 

“How about the profits? Do your railroads pay?” I 
asked. 


87 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

“Yes, we usually manage to show a small surplus after 
meeting interest charges on the capital invested. But 
our revenue fluctuates from year to year, according to 
whether there is a good or a poor season for farming and 
sheep raising. In unfavourable seasons the carriage of 
fodder and the transfer of stock to better pastures at 
reduced rates mean smaller earnings and larger operating 
expenses. Extensions into thinly settled districts also 
cut down the net income, since several of these lines earn 
little more than the cost of maintaining them. Neverthe¬ 
less, we are pushing out roads into the good territory, 
knowing that settlement will soon follow and that the 
new lines will ultimately become profitable.’’ 

Another prominent official with whom I talked on this 
subject is a Queensland railroad man. Said he: 

“As far as I can see, the government control of our rail¬ 
ways has been an excellent thing for the state. It has 
given us profitable railways which could never have been 
built by private parties. Take our Rockhampton line, 
for instance. It begins at the coast and runs four hun¬ 
dred miles westward through a thinly populated country. 
When it was first completed there were places on that line 
where one could ride one hundred miles without seeing a 
town. But the railroad made the land on both sides of 
the track available for sheep raising. It is now taken up 
for pastures, and there are hundreds of flocks feeding upon 
it. Towns have sprung up along the line, and in time the 
road will pay well.” 

“How about the profits on the Queensland roads?” 
said I. 

“If there are any, they are never large,” was the reply, 
“you see we don’t want a big profit, for it is our principle 
88 


THE STATE-OWNED RAILWAYS 

to keep the rates for freight and passengers as low as we 
can. As the lines make more money we shall lower the 
rates and increase wages.” 

“Are you satisfied with the narrow gauge?” I asked. 

“Yes. It pays us better than the broad gauge. Our 
roads cost only about half as much per mile to build as 
those of New South Wales and they furnish all the trans¬ 
portation required.” 

“Where do you get your equipment?” I asked. 

“We used to buy most of our rolling stock from Eng¬ 
land, but now, as in the other Australian states, our loco¬ 
motives and cars are built at the state railway shops. 
Our shops are at Ipswich, which is close to big coal de¬ 
posits. We buy steel rails from the steel mills at New¬ 
castle, and about the only equipment we now get from 
abroad are patented devices and specialties.” 

I may add that not all those to whom I have talked are 
so favourable in their reports on the state-owned railways. 
One man reminded me that in most cases these lines, 
operated in the interests of the people, charge as high 
freight and passenger rates as do our privately owned roads 
in the States. Another calls attention to the fact that 
sometimes for four years running the Australian lines 
have shown considerable losses and capital is by no means 
always certain of the four per cent, dividend it has a right 
to expect from them. 

One thing that strikes one about the Australian loco¬ 
motives and passenger and freight cars is the fact that 
they are much lighter than those to which we are accus¬ 
tomed. The freight cars seem particularly small and 
light. In my trips over the country I have passed hun¬ 
dreds of slat-sided cars transporting livestock. The sheep 
89 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

cars are double-deckers. The Australian wheat goes to 
market in open-top cars, instead of in box cars, as with 
us, and is handled in sacks instead of in bulk. The 
wheat export amounts to one hundred million bushels a 
year, and most of it is shipped overseas in bags. I have 
seen enormous stacks of full wheat bags along the railways 
and at the ports. As the grain is harvested in the dry sea¬ 
son, there is no danger of its fermentation when bagged 
and stacked in this way. Neither is there much risk 
of its getting wet, for it is often covered with tarpaulin, 
both in the stacks awaiting shipment and on the cars. 
There is, however, considerable loss every year from rats 
and other vermin. Since she got her grain elevators at 
Sydney, New South Wales has been building special grain 
cars for handling wheat in bulk. 

The ties for Australia's railroads are furnished by her 
eucalyptus forests, many of which contain splendid tim¬ 
ber. The Tasmanian blue gum, a species of eucalyptus, 
is one of the most durable of woods. It has twice the 
strength of English oak and, used as railroad ties or paving 
blocks, in the Tasmanian climate it has a life of from 
fifteen to twenty years. In the dry air of Victoria blue 
gum sleepers last twice as long. The jarrah, a eucalyptus 
of Western Australia, has been known to withstand fire 
better than iron girders. This wood is one of the few 
that will resist the white ants, and seaborers make no 
impression upon it. 1 have heard that jarrah piles driven 
at Port Adelaide in 1868 showed no signs of decay forty- 
two years later. Karri is another remarkably durable 
eucalyptus of Western Australia much used for ties. 
Karri planks from ships dismantled after thirty years of 
service have been sawed up to make paving blocks, and a 
90 


THE STATE-OWNED RAILWAYS 


log of this wood that had lain forty-six years in mud be¬ 
low high-water mark was reported “perfectly sound” by 
a government expert. 

One of the biggest railroad undertakings of modern 
times was building the Australian Transcontinental line 
for a thousand miles across the desert. Until this was 
completed Western Australia was cut off from her sister 
states by a great waste of sand and could communicate 
with them only by telegraph or by sea. The ocean journey 
from Perth to Sydney took seven days. Neither Western 
Australia nor her neighbour, South Australia, felt able to 
finance an unprofitable railroad joining them together. 
So it became the job of the Commonwealth government, 
which began the line in 1912 and completed it five years 
later. 

The overland journey from Adelaide, South Australia, 
to Perth on the coast of Western Australia used to take 
two months. By train it now takes two days. Besides 
decreasing the time between Western Australia and 
New Zealand or America, the railroad shortens the trip 
from London to Melbourne or Sydney by almost a week. 

Preparing the road-bed and laying the track across the 
level stretches of the desert were easy matters. The 
real problem was providing water and supplies for the two 
construction gangs as they worked toward each other 
across the hot and arid wastes, unwatered and uninhabited 
save by hordes of flies and mosquitoes. Four hundred 
and twenty-five miles west of Port Augusta the railroad 
enters the Nullarbor Plain, a vast empty limestone 
plateau on which there is not a single water hole. Here it 
runs in a bee line for three hundred and thirty miles— 
the longest straight stretch of track in the world. The 
91 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

rest of the route is through sandhill country where there 
are at intervals natural rock catchment basins for water. 
Although this region is called a desert, there is an annual 
rainfall of from two to five inches, and this was caught 
in great roofed-over reservoirs and saved for the use of 
the workers. 

For some time the question of water supply on the Null- 
arbor Plain threatened to hold up indefinitely the con¬ 
struction of the Transcontinental. Then a message came 
from Kalgoorlie telling the good news that water had been 
found on, or rather under, the plain. The engineer in 
charge wired that he had pumped out seventy thousand 
gallons from an artesian bore about three hundred miles 
east of Kalgoorlie. Another bore, one hundred miles 
farther east, struck brackish water usable for locomotives. 
These two wells now furnish water sufficient not only for 
the railroad but for limited irrigation and pastoral pur¬ 
poses besides. There are tanks every fifty miles across 
the plain, connected by a pipe line from the Kalgoorlie 
reservoir. 

While the Transcontinental was being built, and before 
the pipe and the tanks were constructed, water for two 
hundred horses, three hundred camels, and twelve hun¬ 
dred workmen had to be brought by cars and on camel- 
back. At one time it was carried three hundred miles by 
tank cars and thirty miles by camels to the eastern end of 
steel at a cost of thirty-nine dollars for each thousand 
gallons. To supply the western railhead, water was piped 
for three hundred and fifty miles to a big reservoir and 
then hauled two hundred and twenty miles to the con¬ 
struction camps. 

Without the aid of camels it is probable that the Trans- 
92 


THE STATE-OWNED RAILWAYS 


continental never could have been built. The “ships 
of the desert” took the engineers on the preliminary survey 
of the line, they bore the men who went along the route 
looking for wells and water holes, and later on they were 
the indispensable carriers of water and construction 
materials over miles of waste land and through months of 
overpowering heat. 

Every effort was made to provide endurable conditions 
for those who worked on the railroad. The chief engineer 
and his staff lived on camp trains specially designed for 
desert use. The trains consisted of seven or eight coaches 
built with double roofs to give protection from the sun. 
All the openings were screened against the swarms of 
flies, mosquitoes, and other insects. There were, besides, 
a car for stores, a well-equipped hospital car, and cars with 
living and sleeping quarters for the staff. 

The workmen lived in small light huts of canvas and 
wood, which could be knocked down and moved, as they 
had to be about every three days. Like the cars, each of 
the huts used for sleeping quarters had an extra roof. 
The heat was often so intense that at midday it was some¬ 
times impossible to work, for rails, sleepers, and every¬ 
thing else were too hot to touch. The thermometer 
frequently registered one hundred and thirty degrees in 
the shade. 

Supplies of clothing and food were brought up from the 
warehouses at the eastern and western terminals of the 
road on what were known as “tea and sugar” trains. 
The men were well fed and their daily menus included 
not only bread and meat, but even fresh fruit and vege¬ 
tables. 

It cost thirty million dollars to build the Transcon- 

93 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

tinental, but this sum is not considered unduly great in 
view of the obstacles overcome. Except for the money 
spent in supplying water, the expenses were not large. 
In no part of the route does the track cross a river or climb 
a steep grade. Comparatively few common labourers 
were required. Construction was simply a matter of 
making an even bed for the sleepers, then placing the 
rails with a track-layer, and bolting and spiking them 
down. The road moved forward at the rate of a mile a 
day. 

The World War slowed up the work, for many of the 
construction force enlisted. Nevertheless, at the end of 
five years eastern and western railheads met, and to-day 
it is possible to go by train from Perth to Brisbane on a 
route joining all the capitals of the five mainland states. 
The Transcontinental may, perhaps, never pay in pounds, 
shillings, and pence. In time saved, however, it has 
already proved itself invaluable and, what is more im¬ 
portant, it serves to bind all parts of the Commonwealth 
more closely together. 


94 



Discovery of Australia’s artesian water has led to the reclamation of 
millions of her acres. Artesian bores spouting thousands of gallons solved 
the water problem in laying the Transcontinental across the desert. 












Though the great gold diggings of Ballarat are worked out, thousands 
of prospectors are still panning the stream beds of Victoria, hoping for one 
more great strike like those of the gold-fever days. 







CHAPTER XV 


GOLD DIGGINGS IN CREEK AND DESERT 

I AM in Ballarat, the heart of what was once the chief 
mining district of this golden continent. Within a 
stone’s throw of me was found a lump of gold as big 
as a watermelon and from under the hotel where I 
stay fortunes in gold have been taken. Every bit of earth 
in sight has been run through a sieve again and again to 
wash out the precious dust it contained, and for miles about 
the valley of Yarrowee Creek has been honeycombed with 
diggings. It is even said that the water in some of the 
deepest mines contains gold. One story is told of how 
several barrels of water from here were hermetically sealed 
and sent off to Paris. They were kept there for years, and 
when opened were discovered to have precipitated several 
gold nuggets. I doubt the truth of this story! 

Gold was known to exist in Australia long before 1851, 
when Hargraves, an Australian who had prospected in 
California, discovered it in paying quantities. Hargraves 
had gone to California in the gold rush of ’48 and had 
failed, but he was haunted by the idea that the gold 
country in California resembled a certain valley in the 
hills of New South Wales. This valley was that in which 
Ballarat lies. He decided to go back home and prospect. 
He did so and his discoveries threw all Australia into 
a fever. In a short time it was proved that every creek 
within a radius of seventy miles from here had gold in its 
95 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

sands, and in the placer mines opened at Ballarat gold 
was found in great lumps. 

One of the first big nuggets weighed one hundred and one 
pounds, while the “Welcome” nugget weighed as much as 
a good-sized man, tipping the scales at one hundred and 
eighty-four pounds and nine ounces. I have seen models 
of the nuggets in the mining,museums of Queensland, of 
New South Wales, and of Victoria, as well as in the differ¬ 
ent state mining schools. The “Welcome” nugget, which 
was the size of a big baby, was twenty inches long, twelve 
inches wide, and seven inches thick. It was sold in Mel¬ 
bourne for fifty thousand dollars. In 1858 a lump of gold 
worth twenty thousand dollars was found in New South 
Wales, and fourteen years later a mass of gold and quartz 
weighing six hundred and thirty-nine pounds was dis¬ 
covered at Hills End in the same state. An offer of one 
hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars for it was refused. 

Some of the most remarkable mines of Victoria were 
at Bendigo, about a hundred miles from Melbourne, 
where in the height of their production the goldfields 
yielded more than a million dollars a year. The mines at 
Ballarat are now worked out, but quartz mining is still 
carried on at Bendigo Amalgamated, a consolidation of 
the mines in that region. The average yield is about one 
hundred and sixty-five thousand ounces a year. Since 
1851 the mines of Victoria have produced upward of one 
and a half billion dollars’ worth of gold. 

The Ballarat of to-day is not like the Ballarat of the 
great gold rush. Then it was a city of tents, which prob¬ 
ably housed more people than the present population of 
twenty thousand. Now it is a well-built town, with many 
comfortable homes, and streets as wide and as well 
96 


GOLD DIGGINGS IN CREEK AND DESERT 

paved as those of Washington. The principal thorough¬ 
fare is lined with marble statues, and there are others 
scattered throughout the long park in the suburbs. 

Ballarat has good stores and banks, and even a stock 
exchange, but there is not a mine-shaft house in sight. 
The people are especially proud of their theatre seating 
three thousand, an art gallery containing some fairly good 
paintings, and a mechanics' institute with a library of 
twenty-two thousand volumes. It has four other free 
libraries, good public schools, and churches of every 
Christian denomination under the sun. It has flour mills, 
woollen mills, and iron factories. The town has become 
the commercial centre of a rich pastoral and agricultural 
region. It is seventy-five miles from Melbourne by rail, 
and on the main road from Melbourne to Adelaide. 

The mining school at Ballarat is, I venture, as well 
equipped as any similar institution in the United States. 
1 had letters to its superintendent from the director of the 
mint at Melbourne, and its president kindly showed me 
through. The college is built over a gold mine which it 
operates to give practical training to the students. The 
boys go down into the shafts and work the mine, thus 
learning by actual experience how gold is taken out of the 
earth. Connected with the school are all sorts of reduc¬ 
tion works run by the students, including cyanide plants, 
a chlorination plant, and facilities for all the various 
methods of treating ore. There are large chemical labora¬ 
tories, assay furnaces, and, in short, everything needed 
for such a college. 

To-day Victoria and Western Australia are the leading 
gold-producing states of the Commonwealth. I have 
talked with miners from Western Australia, who tell me 
97 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

that much of the vast territory has not been touched. 
Said one mining expert: 

"The gold we know of extends over an area of more than 
six hundred thousand square miles. You can take dirt 
from the road at any point along a thousand miles, wash 
it, and find colour.” 

Kimberley, where gold was discovered in the eighties, 
was the first of the Western Australia fields, and it proved 
a disappointment. The prospectors there were working 
along dispiritedly when in 1892 a man rode into the town 
of Southern Cross with great news. He brought with him 
ten thousand dollars’ worth of nuggets and dust picked up 
in two days in a desert region that the aborigines called 
“Goldarda.” There are still old-timers to tell of the 
scenes that followed. In two hours the price of a horse 
rose from ten dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars. 
Camels could not be had. Dogs, cows, and goats were at 
a premium. So was anything on wheels, from buggies to 
baby carriages. Some men set off with wheelbarrows. 
In a day or two Southern Cross was practically deserted, 
and its inhabitants were trekking across the hundred and 
twenty-five miles of desert that lay between them and 
the new strike at Coolgardie. They did not even know 
the location of the water holes along the route. Many 
were two or three weeks on the way and arrived with 
tongues swollen and lips cracked and blackened from 
thirst. 

In a few weeks the news brought men from all parts of 
Australia; in a few months it attracted them from all 
parts of the world. Capital became interested. The 
Wealth of Nations mine at Coolgardie, from which three 
great nuggets were taken at once, but which later proved 
98 



In parts of Westein Australia, where water cannot be had, gold is dry- 
blown. The soil is first sifted for nuggets and then the metal is separated 
from lighter waste by means of bellows. 








More than ten thousand camels are used in the dry back blocks, es¬ 
pecially in the mining districts of Western Australia. Sometimes it may 
cost five dollars or more to give one a real drink. 





GOLD DIGGINGS IN CREEK AND DESERT 


only a low-grade mine, was discovered by an Indian camel 
driver who was paid two dollars and a half for his find. 
The owners of the camel took out more than a hundred 
thousand dollars' worth of gold and then sold the mine for 
seven hundred thousand dollars. The original Coolgardie 
claim yielded more than two and a half million dollars in 
its first ten years. 

In 1893, when the Coolgardie claims were giving out, a 
grocer of Adelaide formed a syndicate of fifteen people with 
a capital of less than a thousand dollars. The prospectors 
they sent out turned up the riches of the famous Golden 
Mile of Kalgoorlie. Five years later, when the syndicate 
was disbanded, it voted its original capital as a bonus to 
its secretary. The value of the shares, based on its hold¬ 
ings at the Golden Mile, was then more than thirty-six 
million dollars. At that date the syndicate had produced 
seventeen tons of gold. The money distributed to the 
Adelaide shareholders was close to five millions in cash, 
besides upward of seventeen millions in stock. 

The great handicap in the Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie, and 
other desert mines was lack of water, which then cost 
about as much as gasoline does now. In the Coolgardie 
fields water brought as much as twenty-five and fifty cents 
a gallon, and there was a regular business of evaporating 
and condensing salt water from the lakes and wells to make 
it fit to drink. 

It was impossible to get enough to wash out the gold, 
which had to be dry-blown. That is, the soil spaded from 
shallow trenches was first sifted for nuggets, then thrown 
into the wind and expertly caught in iron pans. It was 
tossed up again and again to get rid of the lighter waste. 
Later on bellows worked by hand or foot power were used, 
99 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

and still later fanning mills were introduced. I am told 
that in those early “roaring nineties’" one could see above 
the mining camps in the desert a red cloud of dust. This 
“hell cloud,” as it was called, hid the miners from view, and 
out of it came the sound of laughter and curses, and the 
roar of the gravel raining into thousands of iron pans. 

Although at that time the whole of Western Australia 
had only about as many people to pay its taxes as Des 
Moines has now, the government did a great deal to help 
get water for the miners. In the Coolgardie district it 
built a number of tanks, bored artesian wells, and installed 
condensers. Kalgoorlie now has a reservoir with a capac¬ 
ity of five million gallons. It is fed by a stream through a 
steel pipe as big around as a barrel and three hundred and 
fifty miles long. The water comes from a point near 
Perth and is lifted by a series of pumps to a height of 
about thirteen hundred feet. The Western Australia 
government sells it at an average rate of seventy-five cents 
a thousand gallons; in the early days water used to cost 
sixteen times as much. Without this pipe line Australia’s 
best gold mines would have to be abandoned, and the cities 
of Coolgardie, Kalgoorlie, and Boulder would sink back 
into a forlorn desert. Nowadays, as one of the old pros¬ 
pectors put it, “Water? They waste it! At Kalgoorlie, 
they even bathe in it, at twenty-five cents a head!” 

In developing Western Australia’s mineral wealth, 
camels have proved almost as invaluable as water. They 
had been introduced into the country in the early days and 
multiplied faster than in their native Arabia. Along with 
them came their nomadic or Bedouin drivers, who found 
Australian wages to their liking and stayed on, although in 
many cases their jobs have now been taken by white men. 
ioo 


GOLD DIGGINGS IN CREEK AND DESERT 


It is estimated that more than twelve thousand camels are 
worked in the dry back blocks of the continent. The un¬ 
gainly beasts stalk back and forth between the railway 
terminals of the east and the dry lands of the west. 
From the silver-mining centre at Broken Hill in western 
New South Wales they start out for the northwestern part 
of the state and for interior South Australia, Queensland, 
and the Northern Territory. From “The Hill” they take 
supplies to the remote sheep stations, returning with wool. 
Three hundred and fifty camels are worked by the water- 
supply branch of the Western Australian government. 
They serve the gold prospectors and the settlers of the 
“Never-Never Land/’ and they are the police and mail 
carriers of the desert blocks. 

In the desert gold-mining camps a considerable expense 
of doing business is watering the camels. A camel ordina¬ 
rily drinks seven or eight gallons, when thirsty he will take 
in twenty gallons, and after several days without water 
forty gallons are hardly enough to fill him up. Where 
water is scarce it may cost his owner two or three dollars 
to treat his mount to a drink; one camel just in from a long 
trip drank fourteen dollars’ worth before he was satisfied. 

But before I leave the subject of gold mining in Aus¬ 
tralia let me tell you of the visit I made to the mint at 
Melbourne where for many years gold dust and bullion 
have been turned into sovereigns. The gold comes from 
different sections of Australia and after being coined is 
shipped off to London. The greater part of the metal 
goes into sovereigns and half sovereigns. 

I went through this money mill with its director. We 
first watched the gold as it came in. Some of it was dust, 
but much was in the form of bullion bricks from the 
ioi 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

smelters. As it was handed over the counter the clerks 
weighed it, using scales so fine that they can weigh accu¬ 
rately a golden grain as small as the point of a pin or a great 
nugget the size of my head. After the gold has been 
weighed a memorandum of the amount is made for the de¬ 
positor, which he presents at the cashier's office to get his 
money. 

Leaving this room we went on to see how the smelting 
was done. The gold is melted in crucibles or pots of fine 
clay and plumbago. Each pot has a capacity of perhaps 
half a gallon of liquid gold. It is fitted into a little furnace 
not unlike the forge of a country blacksmith, set in a long, 
narrow ledge on one side of the melting room. In the room 
we entered there were twenty of such furnaces, nearly all of 
them filled with gold. The fuel used is coke, and a strong 
draught makes such a heat that the metal bubbles like 
boiling water. I was dazzled when I looked into the pots. 
The liquid was emerald rather than gold. I saw it poured 
out into moulds and the stream was a current of beautiful 
molten green on a background of light yellow. Later, 
when the moulds were opened, the green had disappeared 
and the metal had become a bright golden yellow. 

I next watched the bars of bullion being rolled into the 
strips from which the gold coins are cut. Each was a ruler 
of gold twenty-five inches long, two inches wide, and not 
quite half an inch thick. I followed a truck load of these 
bars as they were wheeled into the rolling room. Here 
they were pressed between great steel rollers, which made 
them longer and thinner. At the finish each bar had be¬ 
come fourteen feet long and was just the thickness of a 
sovereign. Moreover, the pressing had polished it so that it 
shone like a new wedding ring. I noticed that the work- 


102 



Once treated with scant consideration, the shearers who now have 
one of the strongest unions in the country are veritable autocrats about 
their hours, wages, and quarters. Every afternoon they knock off for 
tea and a smoke. 



Like 600,000 other Australians, these leather workers are union men 
with good wages, fair hours, and a weekly half holiday. Forty-eight 
hours is the weekly maximum, though in some trades as little as thirty-six 
hours count as full time. 















The agriculturist feels keenly the need for more people on the land, but 
he stands with the trade unions in opposition to letting in swarms of 
coloured labour from the over-populated Orient. 









GOLD DIGGINGS IN CREEK AND DESERT 

men wore thick gloves, and was told that this was because 
the strips of metal get hot as they are rolled. 

The next process is making the blanks. This is done 
by steel punches which cut the metal into disks much as 
a cook cuts the dough in making biscuits. I stood beside 
this machine and heard it chop, chop, chop, as it punched 
out sovereigns at the rate of ninety to the minute, twenty- 
seven thousand dollars per hour. 

Each blank is weighed to see that it has exactly the right 
weight of gold for a sovereign, and is then run through a 
coining press which stamps the image of the king upon it 
and at the same time mills the edges. All of this work is 
done with cold steel pressing upon the cold gold. The 
only heat after the melting is that which comes from the 
pressure caused by the enormous weight on the metal. 

I have no doubt that Australia will be turning virgin 
gold into sovereigns for years and years to come, but its 
production of the precious metal is on the wane. The 
mines of Kalgoorlie are still paying, but those of Coolgardie 
are worked out. The annual production for the whole 
country is now only half that of Victoria in its best days, 
and is considerably below the best year's output in 
Queensland and Western Australia. It may be, though, 
that more Golden Miles lie hidden under the vast unpro¬ 
spected areas of the continent. 


103 


CHAPTER XVI 


A WHITE WORKERS* CONTINENT 

T HE workers’ continent—and for white men only! 

That is how these people speak of Australia. 
They have tried to make it the paradise of the 
labourer, and are determined to keep out all mem¬ 
bers of the coloured races—black, brown, or yellow—who 
might wish to share it with them. All sorts of schemes 
have been devised for the benefit of the wage-workers, 
most of them intended, as far as I can see, to help them 
sell the least work for the most money. 

Australia is the land of the labour union. No other 
country is so thoroughly unionized, and nowhere else does 
organized labour go so far toward running both the govern¬ 
ment and business. There are unions of sheep shearers 
and factory workers; unions of rabbit trappers and harness 
makers; there are unions for occupations I hardly knew 
existed. Six hundred thousand people, or one out of every 
nine of the population, belong to labour unions of one 
kind or another. 

This continent is also the home of the eight-hour day. 
It was established in Australia and New Zealand long be¬ 
fore workers in other countries even began to demand it. 
Australians are so proud of this fact that they have put 
up a monument to remind posterity how its work day was 
shortened. I have seen most of the great monuments of 
the world; I have lived in the shadow of our own huge 
104 


A WHITE WORKERS' CONTINENT 


shaft in honour of George Washington, climbed the 
Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, and beheld the splendour of 
the Taj Mahal in India. But never before have I seen 
anything like this monument in Melbourne, commemorat¬ 
ing a victory for labour in its centuries of struggle with 
capital. It would never be noticed for its size or beauty, 
for it is merely a simple shaft of stone. Its significance 
comes from the three huge figure “8's" at its top. These 
represent the slogan of Australian workmen of more 
than a generation ago—“ eight hours' work, eight hours' 
play, and eight hours’ rest." The “Three Eights" mon¬ 
ument, as it is called, gives the key to the story of the 
hours of labour in Australia to-day, and the spirit which 
still seems to rule the people. 

The agitation for the shorter working day began in Aus¬ 
tralia nearly seventy years ago, shortly after the gold fever 
first struck the country. Many of those who had come out 
to make their fortunes in nuggets found only disappoint¬ 
ment, and had to look for other work. Most of these men 
drifted to Melbourne and Sydney, where they soon organ¬ 
ized trade unions like those to which they had belonged in 
England. The workers in the building trades in New 
South Wales were the first to get their eight-hour day. In 
a comparatively short time it was generally adopted in all 
the states, and now forty-eight hours is the recognized 
maximum for a week’s work throughout Australia, al¬ 
though in some trades forty-four, forty-two, and even 
thirty-six hours are considered full time. 

Recently there was a move in the Federal Parliament 
to legislate a forty-four-hour week throughout the Com¬ 
monwealth, but the members of the Labour Party were not 
quite strong enough to carry the measure. The forty-four- 

105 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

hour week now generally prevails in Queensland, where 
the Labour Party is firmly in the saddle and rides all kinds 
of socialistic hobbies. The rallying cry is: “Cheap bread, 
cheap beef, and high wages.” In the attempt to realize 
the first two of these ideals the state runs twenty-two 
cattle ranches and fifty butcher shops. It catches fish 
and sells them at retail, operates a meat-packing plant, 
and has a big produce business selling direct to the con¬ 
sumer without the intervention of the middleman. It 
even runs a hotel of its own. Wages and hours are regu¬ 
lated by the government, which also owns and operates 
the railroads, the saw-mills, and the mines. There is a 
government savings bank with deposits of seventy millions 
of dollars from a population of seven hundred thousand: 
The state competes with private insurance companies and 
has lowered rates by twenty-five per cent. 

When the labour unions began their campaign for 
shorter hours, workers in the goldfields were making such 
big pay that the general wage level was high, and the men 
were then satisfied with their earnings. Later the original 
slogan was enlarged until the “four sacred eights” of 
Australian labour were: “eight hours of work, eight hours 
of play, eight hours of rest, and eight bob a day.” But 
after a while, eight shillings, or two dollars, did not look 
so fair to the workers as the “living wage,” and so they be¬ 
gan to go after that. How well they have succeeded may 
be gathered from the definition of a living wage as laid 
down by the New South Wales Court of Industrial Arbi¬ 
tration. It reads: 

The living wage is standardized as the wage which still does neither 
more nor less than enable a worker of the class to which the lowest 
wage would be awarded to maintain himself, his wife, and two children 
106 


A WHITE WORKERS' CONTINENT 

—the average dependent family—in a house of three rooms and a 
kitchen, with food, plain and inexpensive, but quite sufficient in 
quantity and quality to maintain health and efficiency, and with allow¬ 
ance for the following other expenses: Fuel, clothes, boots, furniture, 
utensils, taxes, life insurance, savings, accident or benefit society, loss 
of employment, union contributions, books and newspapers, train 
and tram fares, sewing machine, mangle, school requisites, amuse¬ 
ments and holiday, intoxicating liquors, tobacco, sickness and death, 
domestic help, unusual contingencies, religion or charity. 

It is such a standard of living that the Australian labour 
unions are determined to maintain for the workers. So 
far they have been able not only to enforce most of their 
demands, but to have many of them written into the laws. 
Factories, shops, and stores are subject to all sorts of re¬ 
strictions, and seem to be run quite as much in the in¬ 
terests of the workers in them as for their owners. 

Each union has rigid rules and regulations governing 
the employment of its members, and generally they are 
upheld by the state courts for the arbitration of industrial 
disputes. In New South Wales, for example, the law gives 
preference to union men in employment. In one instance, 
an employer wanted a workman. Two men applied, one 
a unionist. But the employer chose the non-union man, 
believing him more competent for the job. For this the 
Arbitration Court fined him ten dollars, and he had to pay 
costs of as much more. The judge informed him that the 
court, and not the employer, must decide as to the com¬ 
petency of employees. 

In another case some dock workers had made demands 
which a steamship company would not meet. The men 
did not strike, but, just when their work was most urgently 
needed, went on a picnic. To avoid such interruptions 
the company proposed to pay men to work by the week 

107 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

instead of by the day and offered a fair weekly wage. The 
unionists refused to accept these terms, whereupon the 
company employed non-union men, and the case went to 
the Arbitration Court. The judges ruled that the union 
members must be reinstated, and the company had to dis¬ 
charge the men it had hired to take their places. 

At Sydney the union of dock workers is so strong that 
no steamship company dares employ a non-union man. 
But once the wharfingers, as they are called, went a step 
too far. In order to create a shortage of workers and 
force up wages they stopped taking in new members. The 
ship owners had the union brought before the Arbitra¬ 
tion Court, which decided that, although the dock men 
might keep non-union men off the Sydney wharves, they 
must keep their books open to receive new members. 

One more case: An oil company employed six lads under 
twenty-one to tighten up the hoops on some casks. The 
coopers’ union took the matter to the Arbitration Court, 
which upheld the men and declared this simple hammering 
was cooperage. The company was fined and had to dis¬ 
charge the youths and employ coopers at fifteen dollars a 
week to do boys’ work. 

I am told that decisions of this sort, and the laws behind 
them, have bred bad feeling between wage earners and 
the men for whom they work. A man of means is dis¬ 
trusted by the working classes, not because they may envy 
him his wealth, but because he is an employer. The capi¬ 
talist class has little sympathy for the workers, while the 
employed have a strong antagonism for the employer, and 
so the Australians are a divided people. 

But there is one subject on which all Australia is agreed, 
and that is that the continent shall be kept exclusively a 
108 


A WHITE WORKERS' CONTINENT 

white man's country. The workers and their unions are 
to a large degree responsible for this policy of a white 
Australia, but no party opposes it. The men in power say 
that Australia has learned her lesson in time, and that she 
will never let in cheap labour from China, Japan, and 
the surrounding islands which would lower wages and the 
standard of living. North and west of the continent are 
seven hundred millions of Orientals who would be glad to 
get out of their crowded countries into this thinly settled 
land of promise. Besides, all the Australians are proud 
of their British blood. They wish to keep it without a 
“taint of colour," and seem to be willing to pay the price 
in a smaller population and slower development. 

Still, there are some Australians who doubt the ad¬ 
visability of Asiatic exclusion. Is it possible, they ask, 
for a population of five and a half millions to hold this vast 
area until it is filled up with white people? Australia has 
less than two persons to the square mile as compared with 
thirty-five in the United States and three hundred and 
fifty-one in the United Kingdom. The Commonwealth is 
less thickly populated than Siberia, South Africa, or even 
Arabia. Moreover, most of her people are concentrated 
along the east, south, and southwest coasts, which contain 
about eighty per cent, of the population, and there is a 
strong tendency toward concentration in the cities. Nearly 
one fifth of the white inhabitants live in Sydney and forty- 
two per cent, are in the six capitals. Yet Australia is a 
land of raw materials. Her fields, farms, and mines need 
development, and this development calls for many people. 

There are hardly any white men in the tropics of Queens¬ 
land and the Northern Territory, where rich crops of cot¬ 
ton, sugar cane, tobacco, and fruits might be produced. 

109 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Some of the capitalists say that because of the climate 
these regions will never be developed until coloured labour 
is admitted to work them. 

But most Australians feel it is better to delay indefi¬ 
nitely making money out of the tropical lands than to 
allow Northern Australia to be opened to swarms of 
Asiatics. They point to the Negro problem in our own 
South as an example of what would happen if the bars 
were let down, and predict that conditions would eventu¬ 
ally become much worse than any we have in the United 
States. They prefer to depend on selected white immi¬ 
gration, chiefly from Great Britain, and also on their 
favourable birth rate. The births now average 24.6 per 
thousand of population, while the death rate is only 
10.8, so that Australia enjoys a natural rate of increase of 
13.2 per thousand. Some of the labour bodies go so far as 
to oppose even white immigration, clinging obstinately to 
the theory that there is only so much work to be done in 
Australia, and that if more people are admitted there will 
not be enough jobs to go round. 

Exclusion of the coloured races is accomplished quite 
simply. Immigration officers are given the authority to 
compel each would-be immigrant to write fifty words in 
any language the officials choose. Like our own Chinese 
immigration laws, this provision is intended to exclude 
labourers and artisans; it is not meant to keep out travel¬ 
lers, students, or merchants. 

The Australian leaders emphatically deny that their 
policy is founded on race prejudice or persecution. They 
declare it is merely “a defensive measure to prevent an 
intolerable lowering of the standard of living.” 

I had a talk with one of the parliamentary leaders 
110 



If some Australian labour leaders had their way, even white immigrants 
would be barred on the theory that this would lessen the competition for 
jobs and keep wages up. 







Regular courses in all the domestic arts, including laundering, are 
important for the girls of Australia, where servants are luxuries of the few 
and women are thrown on their own resources. 
















A WHITE WORKERS' CONTINENT 

in Victoria about working conditions and the Australian 
standard of living. He said to me: 

“ I know it is commonly believed that we have an eight- 
hour law down here in Australia. The fact is that an 
absolute eight-hour law would not suit us so well as our 
forty-eight-hour-per-week law. Many of our trades have 
such conditions that they cannot be restricted to a fixed 
time, and some days a man must work more than eight 
hours and sometimes less. Take the bakers. They set 
their sponge, and if the dough rises they can get through 
their work in less than eight hours; but if not, it takes them 
nine, or perhaps longer. What we have is a fixed time 
per week and an extra rate for all overtime. In New 
South Wales the forty-four-hour week prevails in many 
important industries. In certain unhealthful trades such 
as rock chopping, sewer mining, stone masonry, and under¬ 
ground mining of metals, the hours may be even shorter." 

"Is there not a large force in the government em¬ 
ploy?" I asked. 

"Yes," was the answer. "In New South Wales the 
railroads, the street cars, and the wharves are under the 
state government. The state has also its employees for 
education, police, health, justice, state lands, public 
works, and other such activities. Besides, it operates 
timber yards, dockyards, brick and pipe works, stone 
quarries, and hydro-electric plants. Moreover, the Com¬ 
monwealth government has its employees in the postal, 
telegraph, telephone, and other national services." 

"How many state and federal employees have you here 
in New South Wales?" I asked. 

I was surprised at the answer, which was: "More than 
ninety-nine thousand." 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

"And what is your population?'' 

"A little more than two million." 

"Well," said I, "let us figure it. Divide your two 
million by ninety-nine thousand and you will find that 
practically one in every twenty persons works for the state. 
If we had a proportionate number of government em¬ 
ployees in the United States, with our population of 
one hundred and ten millions, there would be five million 
government officials, which at the low average of a thou¬ 
sand dollars per annum would cost us at least five billion 
dollars every year. Our Congress would never stand for 
such a condition." 

As far as I can see the workingmen live very well. Few 
of them have hollows in their cheeks or wrinkles in their 
stomachs. A few years ago some statistician calculated 
the value of the food consumed by workers in different 
countries, and according to his figures, an Australian has 
better food and more of it than the average American 
wage earner. The people are great meat eaters. The 
meat is good, too. I have never found better mutton 
anywhere, and the beef is as fat and as juicy as the best 
cuts from Chicago. 

Like the British, these Australians drink an astonishing 
quantity of tea. Every man, woman, and child has a cup 
every afternoon, and, likely as not, another cup or so later 
in the evening. Tea is provided without extra charge at 
hotels, and at railroad stations it is served at the same 
tables as beer and whisky. The tea is always drunk with 
milk and sugar, and every person takes four lumps. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE THREE ‘Vs” IN AUSTRALIA 

A WAY off here on the other side of the globe I have 
/\ had a reminder of home. In the offices of the 

/ \ Minister of Public Instruction of New South 
^ * Wales I found letters sent to Australia by chil¬ 

dren in the United States. Some of our school teachers 
interest their classes in geography by having the pupils 
exchange letters with boys and girls in other parts of the 
world. One such letter, which now lies before me, came 
from a thirteen-year-old boy in Nebraska and was an¬ 
swered by a Sydney lad of the same age. Both letters 
were read in class and here is what the Australian children 
heard about our “Corn-husker” state: 

I live near Maitland, Nebraska. This is a fine place, only dry and 
windy at times. 

Next I will tell you what we grow here. We use ploughs to stir up 
the ground and harrows to level it off. We plant oats and corn with a 
machine called a corn planter. We cultivate the corn with a cultiva¬ 
tor three times. We cut the oats with a binder, shock it up and when 
it is dry it is hauled to the house and stacked. In the fall when the 
corn gets ripe we have to husk it and crib it up to keep it for our stock 
or sell it if we want to. 

Our school begins at nine o’clock in the morning and closes at four 
o’clock in the afternoon. Then we go home and do our chores and get 
ready for supper. After supper I help in my father’s store. 

Most of the girls help their mothers do housework. When they 
think they get old enough they get married if they can find somebody 
to suit them. Well, I guess I will close. 

Yours truly, 

Arthur Ashley. 


ll 3 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Australia has good public schools. In all the states 
primary education is free and compulsory. In New 
South Wales if children between seven and fourteen are 
not sent to school their parents are fined one dollar and 
twenty-five cents for the first offence and five dollars or 
seven days' imprisonment for each subsequent one. There 
are school officers who hunt up absent pupils, and the tru¬ 
ants are sure to be caught. In Sydney a special school for 
truants has been established with a trained psychologist 
in charge, who makes a study of the causes and cure of 
“playing hookey." 

The Australians try to give every child a chance to go to 
school, but this is often difficult in the sparsely settled 
areas. In many districts children must go by train to the 
nearest school and some of the state-owned railroads give 
them passes on which they ride back and forth every day 
without any charge. Where there are a dozen pupils 
in a neighbourhood, provisional schools are established. 
When attendance rises above twelve the provisional school 
goes on the regular public-school list. If there are not 
enough scholars for a provisional school, what is known as 
a half-time school is formed, which is visited by a teacher 
on alternate days. In still more thinly peopled districts 
teachers go from house to house. During one year 
fourteen itinerant teachers in Queensland travelled a 
total of sixty-seven thousand miles to give instruction 
to eighteen hundred pupils. In that state, also, there are 
ten schools where small groups of children of outlying dis¬ 
tricts have a teacher only once a week, on Saturdays’ 

New South Wales has three travelling schools. Each 
consists of a wagon or automobile with a tent for the 
teacher and one for the school. The teacher drives up, 
114 



Although every child is given a common school education, public high 
schools are not yet numerous. Preparatory school training is had 
mostly in sectarian institutions such as the Church of England Grammar 
School at Melbourne. 






In this land of great unsettled tracts some children ride to school on 
horseback, others are carried free on state-owned railroads, and many have 
to wait for the round of an itinerant teacher. 



Butter made in Victoria competes with that from Denmark in British 
markets. The state helps to maintain high standards in dairy products 
by giving expert instruction to farmers and their wives. 






THE THREE “R’S” IN AUSTRALIA 

sets up his tents, takes out his books, administers a dose 
of instruction, and at the end of a week moves on to the 
next place. New South Wales has also correspondence 
courses for pupils cut off from other means of education. 
Grade subjects are taught by mail to children between the 
ages of seven and fourteen. These courses were started 
in 1916 as an experiment and have grown so popular that 
there are now seven hundred children enrolled at the De¬ 
partment of Education at Sydney and fifteen teachers are 
required to direct their work. 

It is no wonder that practically every man, woman, and 
child in the Commonwealth can read and write, a fact that 
should take some of the conceit out of us when we recall 
that in the United States twenty-five per cent, of the men 
examined for our army in the World War were illiterates. 

The Australian school child's health is well looked after. 
Medical inspection, and often medical treatment, is pro¬ 
vided in the city schools, and the school departments of 
several of the states have travelling hospitals and travel¬ 
ling medical, dental, and eye clinics. 

For many years Australia had few public high schools, 
and state education stopped at the age of twelve or 
fourteen years. But high schools are now quite common 
and are growing in numbers and in the variety of subjects 
taught. 

The schools of art are a feature of education in this part 
of the world. In Queensland the government contributes 
dollar for dollar, or rather pound for pound, to any town 
that raises a fund for this purpose. For instance, if a 
village will put up one thousand pounds to establish a 
library and school of art, the government will give another 
thousand, and will continue its gifts as the people give 

115 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

more. These schools of art teach not only drawing, paint¬ 
ing, and music, but also typewriting and stenography, and, 
in fact, about everything you will find offered in the Young 
Men's Christian Association courses in the United States. 
All have reading rooms, and their libraries are well sup¬ 
plied and largely patronized. The School of Arts in Syd¬ 
ney has a library of sixty thousand volumes. 

In addition to these schools every city of any size has its 
technical schools. Sydney has a technological museum 
with eighty-two thousand exhibits including one thousand 
specimens of wool. The museum building alone cost one 
hundred thousand dollars. In Melbourne there is a 
Working Men's College with buildings and equipment 
worth upward of a quarter of a million dollars. The col¬ 
lege is open to both sexes and now has enrolled more than 
two thousand students. Many of its classes are held in the 
evening, when there are lectures upon applied science, 
engineering, mining, commercial law, and other technical 
subjects, as well as on the leading trades. 

The twenty-five technical schools of Victoria are under 
the direction of the Education Department. Among the 
trade subjects taught are photography, wood and metal 
working, plumbing and gas fitting, carpentry, coach 
building, wool sorting, and house and sign painting, with 
cooking and dressmaking for the girl students. 

Every state in the Commonwealth has its university at 
the state capital. I visited Sydney University, which has 
about as many students, both men and women, as Leland 
Stanford University in California. It confers degrees in 
art, science, law, and medicine, and the courses embrace 
all branches except theology. Its graduates are received 
at Oxford and Cambridge on an equal footing with those 
116 


THE THREE “R'S” IN AUSTRALIA 

from British institutions. The same thing is true of gradu¬ 
ates of the University of Melbourne. 

Compared with the enrollment at similar institutions 
in the United States the attendance at Australia's high 
schools and universities is not large. Our state of Wash¬ 
ington and the state of Victoria have about the same 
population. Yet Washington’s high schools and its state 
university have four times as many pupils and students as 
have the Victoria secondary schools and the University of 
Melbourne combined. In all the state universities to¬ 
gether there are less than seven thousand undergraduates. 
As a people, the Australians are sometimes criticized for 
not being interested in higher education. In fact, the true 
stories of the thousands of American boys and girls who 
make sacrifices and do all kinds of work to put themselves 
through college read like fiction to the young Australian. 

Every state has its agricultural college and all run ex¬ 
perimental farms to develop new methods and new crops. 
Agricultural experts are sent travelling around the country 
lecturing to the farmers, and special schools are organized 
to meet any new need. 

For example, in order to help the dairy farmers build up 
a big business, the state governments had their agricultural 
schools give instruction in making butter and cheese. The 
result is that there are now a number of large butter and 
cheese factories in every state and the exports of dairy 
products are rapidly increasing. 

Victoria and New South Wales now produce more than 
one hundred and twenty-five million pounds of butter and 
about fifteen million pounds of cheese every year. The 
dairy cows of New South Wales alone yield enough milk 
annually to give a gallon to every man, woman, and child 

117 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

in the United States, while if the butter export of the Com¬ 
monwealth were sent to us, we would get nearly a pound 
apiece. Most of the Australian butter sold abroad goes 
to British markets. 

The beginning of dairying in Victoria is interesting. 
One of the butter makers talked to me about it while I was 
in Melbourne. Said he: 

“Twenty-five years ago we made no butter to speak of. 
Our total shipments did not amount to more than fifty 
thousand pounds a year. Then the government came 
in and helped the farmers. It arranged a scale of bounties 
for butter exports which was to continue for four years. 
For the first year we were to receive from the government a 
bonus of four cents per pound for all the butter shipped, 
the second year three cents, the third year two cents, and 
the fourth year one cent. The people at once began to 
study and experiment. Men who until then would not 
have a dairy cow on their places bought good stock, and 
now our butter is selling at high prices in both Asia and 
Europe. We use American machinery in our dairies.” 

The number and circulation of Australian newspapers 
show that there is no lack of interest in reading among the 
people. Including the magazines and the trade journals, 
nearly a thousand newspapers and periodicals are pub¬ 
lished on the continent. In Melbourne the leading dailies 
are the Argus, the Age, and the Herald. The Sydney 
Herald is taken in all parts of Australia, and one sees 
the Sydney Mail everywhere. Brisbane, Adelaide, and 
Perth have both morning and afternoon dailies, and, in 
fact, there is scarcely a large town on the continent which 
has not four or more papers. The most popular weeklies 
are the Sydney Bulletin and the Melbourne Australian , 
118 



Some of the aborigines are housed at the back-block mission stations, 
where their children are given an elementary education. But most of 
them are nomads and call only occasionally on the state aborigine boards 
for supplies of food and clothing. 









The Australian aborigines were cannibals in the past, and still stand at 
the bottom of the ladder of human progress. They are incapable of ad¬ 
vancing in contact with civilization and are now a dying race. 











THE THREE “R'S” IN AUSTRALIA 


the Adelaide Observer, the West Australian, and the Sunday 
Sun. The big city newspapers have Saturday editions of 
many pages, which sell at four cents a copy and go out to 
all parts of the Commonwealth. There are all sorts of 
agricultural journals, sheep journals, and financial journals. 

As a rule the Australian newspapers are less sensational 
than those in the United States, yet more lively than the 
English newspapers. Judging by the amount of adver¬ 
tising they carry, I should say that the owner of a popular 
Australian paper has a gold mine. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE ABORIGINES 

T HE Australians call the aborigines “blacks/' and 
“blackfellows," and they sometimes use the word 
“nigger," but the few natives I have seen were 
chocolate brown rather than black. Their hair is 
curly, but not woolly, and they have neither the thick lips 
nor the very flat nose of the African. Some of the aborigi¬ 
nes are quite fine looking; they are generally straight and 
well formed, although often lean. In Townsville, Queens¬ 
land, I saw a “gin," as the women of the aborigines are 
called, who would have passed without notice in any 
mixed crowd of coloured people of our Southern States. 
She was about eighteen years old, with the skin of a mu¬ 
latto, high cheekbones, a slightly receding chin, and a big 
mouth. Her hair was fine, smooth, and glossy. 

This girl had on European clothes, but in the interior of 
northern Australia both men and women go naked, or at 
most have only a few ornaments in their noses and ears, 
with perhaps a string or two about their waist for carrying 
their crude weapons. In northwestern Queensland the 
natives put on belts of human hair for certain ceremonies. 
They wear grass necklaces and often stripe their bodies 
with paint. Sometimes they have several opossum skins 
about their shoulders. They make their hair stiff with fat 
or clay and tie bands about it to keep it from falling into 
their eyes. Hair grease is profusely used everywhere and 
120 


THE ABORIGINES 

the native gives himself a coat of fish oil when he can get 
it. This envelops him in a rancid smell which is very 
offensive to Europeans. The methods of dressing the 
hair vary. Sometimes it is bound up with cloths, and the 
knuckle bones of the kangaroo are so fastened to it that 
they hang down over the ears, or kangaroo teeth are tied 
to the forelocks, so that they dangle between the eye¬ 
brows. 

About Port Darwin in northern Australia the blacks 
wear nose pins, some of which are ten inches long. The 
nose is pierced in the centre, and the pins are thrust 
through so that they stand out for five inches beyond 
the nostrils. They are made of the bones of turkeys, 
kangaroos, or emus. Occasionally parrot quills are used 
with the bright-coloured feathers sticking out on each side 
of the nose. Some of the natives pierce their ears and in¬ 
sert kangaroo bones as plugs. 

Nearly all the aborigines have scars upon their bodies 
and the bigger the scars the prouder the owners. To make 
ornaments the skin is cut with flints or shells, powdered 
charcoal is dusted in, and the wounds are kept open for 
months, so that when they heal they leave ridges on the 
body as thick as your finger. These scars are found on the 
native’s back and chest, on the biceps muscles, and some¬ 
times on the thighs and stomach. Among certain tribes 
the men are scarred by having little pieces of skin cut out 
to the tune of the victim’s yells of pain. 

The scars on the women are not always voluntary, but 
are often the result of the cruel treatment inflicted upon 
them by their husbands. The men regard their wives as 
their slaves and when angry, club them and cut them with 
their stone hatchets or jab them with their hardwood 


I 2 I 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

spears. If a woman is killed in this family discipline, it is 
not considered a matter of consequence. The aboriginal 
wife has no rights that the men are bound to respect, and 
if she is caught away from home any one may maltreat her. 
As a daughter she is sold or given away by her father or 
brothers, and after marriage she is a drudge and slave. A 
husband can lend his wife to a friend or give her away. 
He can forbid her speaking to another man, and in some 
tribes she is not allowed to exchange a word with her 
grown-up brothers. She is often a bride at the age of ten, 
and is usually married before she reaches sixteen. There 
are many bachelors among the blacks, but no old maids, 
for even a homely girl can work. 

When a man dies his widows become the property of 
his eldest brother, who can keep or dispose of them, as he 
pleases. The eldest brother has the right to give away or 
trade off his sisters, and the father often exchanges the 
females of the family for wives for his sons. 

The native woman of Australia cannot complain that all 
the professions of her tribe are not open to her. She does 
all the work, from building the house to getting the food 
and nursing the baby. Most of the tribes are nomadic. 
They build little shelters of bark or skins wherever they 
camp, making a new village at each stopping place. 

In travelling, the woman carries all the belongings of the 
family. She is laden down like a pack horse and walks 
along bent over behind her husband, who, perhaps, carries 
nothing but his clubs and boomerangs. If she falls be¬ 
hind the rest of the party she is pretty sure of a whipping 
from her lord and master. As soon as they come to a new 
camp the woman cuts the bark and builds the hut. She 
then goes out and digs roots, picks fruit, and climbs the 


122 


THE ABORIGINES 


trees to chop out the larvae of worms, which she cooks for 
breakfast. She often carries her child with her, laying it 
on the ground as she digs. As a result of such treatment 
she ages rapidly, her hair soon grows gray, her face 
wrinkles, and she dies at about thirty. Even the men 
seldom live to be more than fifty. 

The lives of the aborigines are shortened by exposure, 
poor diet, and contact with civilization and its vices. 
They are said to be the least developed people of the world. 
I am told that they live more like animals than human 
beings. Their food is largely vegetable, including all sorts 
of roots. They collect wild fruits, and for bread they 
make a sort of paste of grass seeds moistened and ground 
between stones into a flour. This they make into dough 
and eat it either cooked or raw. A favourite dish is wild 
honey, which they find in the hollow trees by following the 
bee to its hoard. 

They are fond of ants, worms, and snakes. There are 
ants in all parts of Australia, and certain varieties are 
caught by the aborigines. The native stands upon an 
ant hill and stamps with his feet, whereupon the insects 
run up his legs. After his shanks are well coated he 
scrapes the ants off and eats them. The larger kinds 
are roasted or dried in the sun. 

Another delicacy is the beetle, which is consumed both 
as a worm and as a matured insect. The worms are picked 
out of the rotten trees and cooked in red-hot ashes. For¬ 
eigners who have eaten them say that so served they are 
not at all bad, and that they look and taste like an omelet. 

Snakes and lizards of all kinds are roasted. The enor¬ 
mous iguana lizard is especially liked. This reptile tastes 
much like a young chicken, and its legs are greedily de- 
123 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

voured by the Australian aborigines. It is eaten also 
throughout South America. 

The natives are fond of grasshoppers and locusts, which 
sometimes come in great swarms. At such times the 
women gather them by the basketful and the people have 
a great feast. They first throw the grasshoppers into the 
fire to burn off the wings and legs and then drag them out 
and roast each one separately. The flesh so prepared 
tastes not unlike roasted chestnuts. 

There seems little doubt that the Australian aborigines 
are cannibals. The records show that they were cannibals 
in the past and according to credible stories the eating of 
human flesh continues among them in parts of Australia 
to-day. 

The government reports give instances of cannibalism. 
Some years ago a man named Edwards saw the natives 
roasting an infant in one of their ovens. He watched the 
blacks open the body and begin eating the flesh, but the 
sight made him so faint that he was not able to continue 
his observations. In his book, “Among the Cannibals/’ 
Carl Lumholtz says that the natives consider nothing so 
delicious as the flesh of a black man, although any human 
flesh is a delicacy. In parts of Queensland children who 
die suddenly are roasted, and there is proof that they have 
even been killed for food. In western Queensland the 
flesh of the full-blooded blacks is preferred, but half-caste 
children are roasted and eaten. The blacks are said to 
prefer the flesh of the Chinese or the Malays, who are 
vegetable eaters, to that of meat-eating Europeans, whose 
flesh is tougher and more salty. 

Many Australians have told me that the blackfellows 
have more intelligence than is generally supposed. They 
124 


THE ABORIGINES 


show evidences of reasoning powers and marvellous skill 
in trailing men and animals. Their children are taught to 
trace snakes and lizards over bare rocks. Even the tiniest 
track on the hardest ground does not escape the really un¬ 
tamed aborigine. For this reason blackfellows are regu¬ 
larly attached to the bush police force, like so many blood¬ 
hounds, to track escaped criminals or men lost in the 
desert. The black tracker almost invariably gets his 
man, even when the criminal is mounted and his pursuer 
afoot. 

The Australian bushmen have a saying: "Get a black 
and you’ll find water.” Parties going into unknown dry 
lands in the west take along an aboriginal, for when there 
is no water to be had from sandy basins or deep hollows in 
granite rocks which still hold some of the last rain, the 
blackfellow is able to find roots of desert trees with which 
to quench thirst. He draws water from these roots by 
cutting them into short lengths and letting them drain, a 
drop at a time, into a wooden bowl. 

As hunters the blacks get the largest game without 
firearms. They trap emus, hunting them with dingoes, 
and driving them into nets and pitfalls. In the wilds, 
hunters station themselves near the water holes and wait 
until the emu comes down to drink. They then rig up a 
net across its path, drive it in, and when it has become en¬ 
tangled, kill it with their spears or clubs. They imitate 
the call of the bird by pounding on a piece of hollow log. 
Sometimes a man will cover himself with bushes and thus 
creep up on an emu and kill it. 

The aborigines catch kangaroos in nets or run them down 
with dogs and spears. They go into the water with bushes 
about their heads and sneak up on ducks and cranes. To 
125 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

get fish they sometimes poison the water with certain 
plants and capture them as they rise to the surface. The 
native way of taking catfish is to wade the streams and 
feel for them with their feet. They kill the fish by biting 
deeply into the flesh just back of the head. 

I bought several boomerangs the other day for fifty 
cents apiece. The boomerang is merely a flat curved piece 
of wood, about two inches wide and from twenty inches to 
a yard long. It is so shaped that when correctly hurled 
it will return to the thrower. The natives display great 
skill in throwing boomerangs, but do not, as I had sup¬ 
posed, use them as weapons. They sometimes kill small 
birds with them, but usually the sticks are merely play¬ 
things. For fighting and for all heavy hunting the black- 
fellows prefer spears and lances, some of which weigh as 
much as four or five pounds and are nine feet in length. 
They are barbed with bone, flint, iron, or hard wood. 

As far as I can learn, the aborigines reverence no Great 
Father as do our Indians, although they believe in a 
future state and happy hunting grounds. They have a 
great dread of ghosts and demons, and think that certain 
places, such as caves and thickets, are haunted by them. 
Their witch doctors are supposed to cure diseases, which 
they are sure are caused by spirits. The doctors pretend 
to locate the demon, and to suck pieces of wood out of the 
body where the pain is. The blacks are convinced that 
most of their woes are due to sorcery, and that certain 
men can cause others to fall sick and die. They believe 
their medicine men can make rain and so hold them re¬ 
sponsible for drought as well as for any other suffering of 
the tribe. The aborigines use all sorts of charms to ward 
off evil spirits. They have an idea that the white settlers 
126 



In their fondness for any kind of sport the Australians sometimes 
shoot turkeys from an airplane. The males of one variety of this bird 
always tend the nest when it contains hatching eggs. 










A full-grown kangaroo standing on his hind legs may be taller than a 
man, but his newborn infant is often only an inch long. The baby is 
almost transparent and must stay a long time in the mother’s pouch. 







THE ABORIGINES 


are dead natives come to life again and claim that they 
themselves will appear as white men after death. 

As the future state of the aboriginal is thought to depend 
largely on how he is buried, the natives are very careful 
to inter their dead fellows with certain rites. The men 
are usually trussed up before burial. The knees of the 
corpse are bent up to its neck and tied there, the arms 
are bound to the sides, and the calves forced up to the 
thighs. Then rugs of skins or pieces of bark are fastened 
about the body, and it is buried three or four feet deep 
in the sand, a mound covered with logs being erected 
above it. As for the women and children, they are con¬ 
sidered of no account, either dead or alive, and their 
remains are usually rolled up between sheets of bark and 
covered with earth. 

In some parts of Australia the aborigines practise 
cremation, while in others the dead bodies are dried before 
fires until they turn into mummies. Some tribes lay the 
dead out upon platforms in the trees, and allow the birds 
to clean the bones, just as the bones of Parsees are cleaned 
by the vultures when the dead are exposed in the Towers 
of Silence at Bombay. Afterward the bones are buried 
in the earth or dropped into hollow trees. 

The aborigines of Australia are a dying race. Nobody 
knows how many were here two centuries ago, but it is 
estimated that there are now only sixty thousand of them 
left. Of these perhaps a fourth are in Queensland, a half 
in Western Australia, and ten thousand in the Northern 
Territory. There are only about one hundred in the 
state of Victoria, and only about fifteen hundred in New 
South Wales. South Australia has sixteen thousand. 
The native race of Tasmania is entirely extinct, its last 
127 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 


member having died in 1876. These figures are not exact, 
for no accurate census of the aborigines has ever been 
taken. They live in the wilds, and in the vast regions 
of unexplored Australia no one can tell how many there 
are. 


128 


CHAPTER XIX 


KANGAROOS AND DANCING BIRDS 

A USTRALIA is a country where every other ani- 
/\ mal carries its baby in its breast pocket. It 
/ \ has one hundred and ten different varieties of 

^ marsupials, or animals which have in their 
bellies pouches in which they carry their young. Some 
of these animals are taller than a man and some are no 
bigger than your thumb. Some climb trees, some gallop 
over the plains, and some spend more than half their time 
in the water. During my travels I have seen certain 
varieties in their natural surroundings and I have ex¬ 
amined and photographed others in the zoological gardens. 
Every city here has its zoological garden, and every 
town has its museum, so that there is no trouble seeing 
the wild animals of Australia, either stuffed or alive. 

What interests me most is the kangaroo. Before I 
came here I had an idea that all kangaroos were alike. 
I now know that there are forty-nine varieties, ranging 
in size from the great gray kangaroo, the male of which 
measures from nose to tail tip more than seven feet, down 
to the kangaroo rabbit and kangaroo rat. The Sydney 
and Melbourne zoos have specimens of nearly every kind. 
In them 1 saw kangaroos taller than I am, jumping around 
in fields inclosed by wire fences. They had enormous 
hind legs, which sent them flying through the air as 
though they were on steel springs. They can leap thirty 
129 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

feet at a jump, and gallop over the country faster on two 
legs than a horse can on four. But, as they tire quickly, 
horses can overtake them in the end. 

The largest of the kangaroos are the red and the gray 
varieties, which are found all over Australia. Horses and 
dogs are bred for the sport of hunting them. The dogs 
are a cross between the greyhound and the deerhound, 
fleet of foot and very fierce. When brought to bay, the 
big kangaroo is dangerous and will attack a dog or a man. 
With its back against a tree it waits for its enemy. A 
dog that comes too near is grasped in the kangaroo’s 
forearms, hugged tightly to its breast, and disembowelled 
with a rip of one of its clawed feet. The ivory-like claws 
on the kangaroo’s hind feet are three or four inches in 
length, and cut like knives. The kangaroo can swim as 
well as run, and when chased, it will, if possible, take to 
the water. If a dog follows, the kangaroo tries to drown 
it by holding it under water. 

The kangaroos go about in pairs. One usually sees 
a male and a female together and the little head of a baby 
kangaroo is often spied sticking out of the pouch of the 
mother. When it first sees the light of day the baby 
kangaroo is not more than an inch long. It has no hair 
and is almost transparent, like an earthworm. Its mother 
puts it into her pouch, and there it lies and sucks until it 
grows big enough to come forth and eat grass. Even 
then it crawls back into the pouch whenever it is tired 
or at the least sign of danger, poking its head out now 
and then to see if the coast is clear. It leaves the pouch 
for good after eight or nine months, when it weighs eight 
or ten pounds, and has become too heavy for the mother 
to carry. 


130 



The opossum is the only one of the Australian marsupials to be found 
anywhere else in the world. Quantities of the fur are exported, to be used 
as trimming on women’s coats. 









Except for the opossum and opossum rat of Patagonia, marsupials 
are found only in Australia. We import quantities of Australian opos¬ 
sum fur as trimming for women’s coats. 




KANGAROOS AND DANCING BIRDS 


Most kangaroos are plain dwellers and grass eaters. 
Carl Lumholtz was the first to discover a variety that 
lives in trees. He found them through the blacks of 
northern Queensland, and with their help was able to get 
several specimens. There are some in the museum at 
Sydney and I am told that others have been sent to several 
museums in Europe. 

The tree kangaroo is a baby beside its big gray and red 
cousins. Its head is like that of a squirrel, and its body 
is better proportioned than that of the kangaroo of the 
plains. It has arms and legs about eight or ten inches 
long, and a tail a little bit longer. It spends most of the 
time in the trees, sleeping there in the daytime and com¬ 
ing down only at night for water. It eats tree leaves. 
This animal is considered a great delicacy by the blacks, 
who have trained the dingoes to tree it. Then the natives 
climb, not only the tree in which the kangaroo is lodged, 
but all the trees near by, in order to catch it if it jumps 
from one to another. 

The musk kangaroo is so small you can put it in your 
pocket. There is a kangaroo that looks like a rabbit, 
known as the hare kangaroo, and another called the rat 
kangaroo. One of the commonest of the small kangaroos 
is the wallaby, which is killed for its skin, as are many of 
the other kinds. There is a great demand for kangaroo 
leather for bags, shoes, and other articles, and quite a lot 
is exported to the United States. 

Australia has a curious little beast which is a sort of 
link between the mammals and the birds. This is the 
platypus, which has a bill like that of a duck, and feet so 
covered with webbing that it can swim. Yet it nour¬ 
ishes its young with its milk. It tunnels in the earth 

131 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

like a mole and is usually found along the fresh-water 
streams of Tasmania and Victoria. It feeds upon small 
water insects, shell fish, beetles, and vegetable particles. 
It is sometimes speared by the blacks, and white men oc¬ 
casionally catch it with night lines. 

The life of the platypus is interesting. A pair will live 
in a little tunnel, one of the openings of which is below 
the water and the other in the bank just above it. Their 
nest is in the tunnel, halfway between the two doors, the 
water door and the land door of their house. Here the 
female hatches her young, laying one or two eggs for each 
setting. As with the American skunk, the odour of the 
platypus advertises its presence for miles around. 

Platypus fur is most beautiful, although the animal is 
so scarce that it is hardly an article of commerce. I have 
a skin of one about twelve inches wide by eighteen inches 
long. The fur is as soft and smooth as moleskin, but the 
bill and the legs are as hard as horn. The skin is some¬ 
times used to make rugs, a good platypus rug being worth 
at least one hundred and twenty-five dollars. 

Some of the queerest animals of this continent are 
found along the coast. Penguins live on the islands of the 
far south, and the big-billed pelican is common, especially 
on the coral reefs off Queensland. There are also seals, 
and a sort of sea cow, which excited great interest 
some years ago on account of its likeness to the fabled 
mermaid. In the first days of Australia one of a party 
of fishermen collecting beche-de-mer on the Queensland 
coast imagined he saw some of these wonderful crea¬ 
tures, half-woman, half-fish. He came running to his 
companions saying that he had seen some mermaids 
disporting themselves in blue sea grass. One of them, 
132 


KANGAROOS AND DANCING BIRDS 


he declared, had raised her head and shoulders out of the 
water and looked at him. He had been so terrified that he 
had fled to the ship as fast as his legs could carry him. 
Later on the men discovered that the supposed mermaids 
were the Australian dugongs. The mothers constantly 
hold their young to their breasts and in this position look 
not unlike the traditional mermaid. 

The dugong is somewhat like a porpoise. It has a 
smooth round body, a broad, fat tail, and two anterior 
flippers, which are short, thick, and fleshy. Its head has 
a rounded muzzle and the mouth of the male has project¬ 
ing tusks. When fully grown the dugong is from eight to 
ten feet in length, but it sometimes attains to as much as 
twelve feet. The animals gather in herds of from half a 
dozen to forty and swim about together. The females, 
which are more numerous than the males, cry like human 
beings when suckling their babies. 

The dugongs are found chiefly in the tropical waters 
about the north coast. The natives hunt them under the 
direction of white men, chasing them in boats or bark 
canoes, and spearing the cows with harpoons. The best 
place to strike is through the tail, for the animal is quite 
powerless once its tail is lifted out of the water. 

The natives are fond of dugong flesh. They cook and 
eat it, boiling down the fat for the oil, which has a medi¬ 
cinal value like that of cod liver oil. The hides and the 
large tusks of the male are marketable. 

I wish I could show you some of the odd birds of Aus¬ 
tralia. The continent has more than seven hundred 
varieties, some of which are found nowhere else. In 
the Brisbane museum I saw scores of different kinds of 
parrots, some as white as snow, others of a delicate pink, 
*33 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

and others as red as blood. The lyre bird, which is one 
of the most curious of all, has a tail shaped just like a 
lyre. The satin-bower bird builds a playground near the 
tree where it has its nest. This is a sort of platform, 
sometimes three feet in diameter, made of sticks woven to¬ 
gether. Over this the male birds build a bower of woven 
twigs, decorating it with all the beautiful things they can 
find. They weave gay feathers among the sticks, and put 
bones and shells here and there. Some of the bowers 
found in the vicinity of settlements are ornamented with 
pieces of broken china and glass. One variety decorates 
the bower with fresh flowers every day. These bowers 
are not nests nor are they the homes of the birds. They 
are supposed to be the rendezvous, or courting places, 
where the males dance and strut before their lady friends. 

The young bower birds are bright green, but when full 
grown the males are of a deep, shining blue-black closely 
resembling satin. They have blue bills, yellow at the 
tip, and their legs and feet are yellowish white. The 
females are green and brown, with bills of a dark horn 
colour. The birds are found all along the east coast of 
Australia and in many parts of the interior. 

You may know the little poem by the small boy who 
was indignant at having his pennies put in the Sunday- 
school box. One verse reads: 

I wish I were a cassowary 
In the wilds of Timbuctoo. 

Wouldn’t I eat a missionary. 

Skin and bones and hymn book, too! 

Australia is the land of the cassowary. In part of the 
country there are thousands of these great birds, which 
resemble the ostrich and the emu. The ostriches and the 
134 



Sydney is not only the fastest-growing city of Australia but also the 
commercial metropolis of the South Seas. About the size of St. Louis, 
it handles the bulk of the trade of New South Wales. 



Most of Australia’s wheat still goes overseas in sacks, loaded in ships 
by belt conveyors, but the grain elevators being built in increasing num¬ 
bers permit the grain to be handled in bulk at less cost. 









The companies operating the world-famous silver and lead mines at 
Broken Hill and the steel works at Newcastle have been large buyers of 
American mining machinery and of plant equipment and tools. 



American automobiles dominate the market in Australia. Here the 
motor-car is now regarded as a necessity, especially in the back country 
where distances are great. 









KANGAROOS AND DANCING BIRDS 


emus live on the open plains. The cassowaries are found 
in the forests and brushwoods. They are wary birds and 
seldom come out of the jungles. I have seen a number of 
them during my stay in Australia. The bird is about 
four and a half feet high, with black feathers, brown at 
the base. It has eyes like an eagle, and a long, thin neck, 
with a naked head, and flat but powerful bill. The casso¬ 
wary's legs are very strong and look more like clubs than 
bird legs. They end in three large claws like those of an 
emu. 

The emu is the national bird of Australia. It is larger 
than the cassowary, and is often five or six feet in height. 
It is much like the ostrich, except that its legs are shorter 
and its body more thickset and clumsy. Its dull brown 
plumage spotted with gray looks more like coarse hair 
than feathers, and emu skins are sometimes used for rugs. 
The cassowaries have no hair on their heads, but the 
heads of the emus are completely feathered, or I might 
say haired. The wings are so short that they are invisi¬ 
ble when held close to the body. The birds are quite 
dangerous and can kill a dog or a man with a kick. 

Hunting emus is one of the favourite sports of Australia 
for which dogs and horses are specially trained. The 
best time for a hunt is early in the morning, when the 
birds go out to feed on grass. The dogs are taught to 
catch the emus by the neck, else they may be killed by the 
bird, which kicks backward or sidewise like a cow. In 
some sections the settlers try to destroy them, to save the 
grass for the sheep. They send out men to hunt for the 
nests and break the eggs. On a back-block sheep station 
fifteen hundred eggs were destroyed at one time, while 
in one county of New South Wales ten thousand emus 
135 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

were killed in nine months. In the thickly settled por¬ 
tions of Australia they have been practically exterminated. 
The aborigines hunt them for food, eating the flesh with 
the skin on it. They are especially fond of the hind 
quarters, which taste not unlike beef. Emu eggshells 
are sometimes mounted in silver and used as milk jugs or 
sugar bowls. 

Among the kingfishers is the kookooburra, or laughing 
jackass. Its hoarse cry is like a laugh and can be heard 
for miles through the forests. This bird has a head about 
as big as its body, but its laugh is a thousand times bigger 
than both body and head. It says, “Ha! ha! ha! hoo! hoo! 
hoo!” contemptuously laughing again and again, until at 
last it puts the nerves of the bush traveller on edge. It 
eats snakes, lizards, and other reptiles, and for this reason 
is protected by law. 


CHAPTER XX 


AUSTRALIA AS OUR CUSTOMER 

( SHOULD like to take any one who doubts the im¬ 
portance of Australia’s foreign trade down to the 
wharves of Sydney harbour. There he would see 
great steamers from London, Marseilles, and other 
great European ports, and smaller vessels from India, 
China, Japan, and the islands of the South Seas. He 
would see merchant vessels from South Africa, and ships 
from New York and San Francisco flying the Stars and 
Stripes. 

An American in business here has shown me the tally 
sheet of a single shipment of American goods landed at 
Sydney from one of the ships out of San Francisco. It 
included four hundred tons of sewing machines, one 
thousand tons of fencing wire, and four hundred tons of 
roll paper. There were also hardware, machinery, and 
machine tools; lubricating, illuminating, and fuel oils; 
chemicals and tobacco. 

We sell to Australia at the rate of about sixteen dollars 
for every man, woman, and child of her population. Ameri¬ 
can goods are displayed in all the stores, and American 
farming implements are used on most of the farms. The 
Australians like our hatchets, which they call tomahawks, 
evidently thinking we first made them as weapons for the 
Indians. Our carpenter’s tools are in demand, especially 
our saws and augurs, braces and bits. 

137 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

American notions are sold everywhere. In Townsville, 
Queensland, I saw patent camp chairs with the Yankee 
trade-mark on them; our cuff clasps and collar buttons 
are in common use, and there are all sorts of knicknacks, 
marked American and sold as such. In fact, the shrewd 
Australian shopkeepers sometimes take advantage of the 
favourable reputation our goods enjoy. The other day I 
dropped into a store that advertised American candy, and 
asked the tall young lady clerk what brands they imported 
from the States. She replied that her “American” sweets 
were made in Sydney, but they called them American 
because they thought this would make them sell better. 

The Australians smoke American tobacco. They use 
finecut and plug, shaving off the plug for their pipes. 
The favourite brands are not those most widely known 
in the United States, but I venture they differ only in 
name. The cigars smoked by the Australians are made 
chiefly in the local factories, but the tobacco in them 
comes from the United States. In the great island of 
New Guinea, which is administered by Australia, our 
tobacco is often used as money, so many plugs buying a 
dinner, an old coat, or, maybe, a wife. 

Australia is the land of the well-to-do. Out of every 
twenty-five grown-ups in the Commonwealth, seven are 
property owners, and even in the big cities, poverty slums 
scarcely exist. Of the five and a half million people in 
the Commonwealth, more than three million have savings 
accounts, their deposits aggregating more than seven 
hundred million dollars. To show Australia's purchasing 
power another way: in one of the early post-war years, 
when our foreign sales were unusually large, China, with 
her teeming population, bought only one hundred and 
138 


AUSTRALIA AS OUR CUSTOMER 

thirty-eight million dollars’ worth of our goods, while 
Australia, with one sixtieth as many people, bought one 
hundred and twenty million dollars’ worth. 

The Australians are good spenders. The people of all 
classes dress well and live well. The women of Melbourne 
wear their clothes with as much of an air as those of any 
city in the United States. They buy expensive hats and 
in midwinter nearly every girl has her furs. As a rule the 
city business men wear silk hats. Their suits do not fit 
quite so well, perhaps, as those cut by American tailors, 
but they are far better looking than the average suit made 
in London. Men’s clothes cost about as much in Mel¬ 
bourne and Sydney as in New York, and American styles, 
especially hats, seem to be in demand. 

American-made stockings really command the Aus¬ 
tralian market, and the well-to-do women, certainly those 
of the cities and large towns, all wear silk hosiery from 
our mills. The same thing is true of American-made cor¬ 
sets. Both men and women seem quite willing to pay 
the higher prices demanded for our shoes, which are 
looked upon with the same high favour as in other parts 
of the world. The men buy mostly high shoes, or “ boots,” 
as they are called, though in the cities oxfords are gaining 
in popularity. The women like our “low cuts” and will 
pay fifteen and eighteen dollars for a pair of smart, well¬ 
shaped pumps, which they call “court shoes,” or strap 
slippers, known here as “bar shoes.” 

A great deal of our lumber used to come to Australia, 
not only in the shape of boards and logs, but as paper, 
some of the Australian newspapers being printed on 
paper made from American wood pulp. But the ship¬ 
ments of newsprint from the United States have declined 
1 39 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

since the duty has risen to fifteen dollars a ton and Canada 
now gets a large share of the business. Many of the 
publishers use American type. A linotype salesman of 
one of the American firms tells me that he has scattered 
his machines throughout the states. 

The leading American typewriters are well known in 
Australia. Some of the agencies conduct business train¬ 
ing schools besides renting and selling machines in the 
same way as in America. One may buy American 
cameras in any large centre, and the American bicycle is 
to be seen everywhere. Our electrical supplies and equip¬ 
ment also have a splendid market in Australia. 

Although Australia is beginning to manufacture her 
own woollen goods, she still buys a large proportion of 
her textiles from England and the European continent. 
Nevertheless, American firms have built up a large trade 
in cottons, particularly shirtings, calicoes, and denims. 

Credit is the latest commodity imported from the 
United States. Until 1921 London bankers had enjoyed 
a monopoly in handling the bonds of the Australian states. 
In that year Queensland disagreed with the home govern¬ 
ment over a question of legislative policy and came to 
New York for money. Two loans amounting to twenty- 
two million dollars were floated in Wall Street at six and 
seven per cent. These bonds soon sold above par, and it 
is believed that the loans will help promote our trade in 
Queensland. 

In a recent year Australia was the largest foreign pur¬ 
chaser of American automobiles and all our leading motor¬ 
car companies now have well-established agencies here. 
The Commonwealth is as big as the United States yet 
it has only one tenth as many miles of railroads, so that 
140 


AUSTRALIA AS OUR CUSTOMER 

the motor car is a great aid to travel, and is becoming, 
as with us, a business necessity. At present the Common¬ 
wealth has only one car to every seventy-three people, 
while the United States has one to every ten and Canada 
one to every sixteen. American automobiles selling for 
from seven hundred to twenty-four hundred dollars are the 
most popular. On account of freight and other charges, 
the selling price of any car is nearly twice that of the same 
make in the United States. Gasoline, tires, and other 
motor supplies also cost about double as much as with us. 
Hence the car that has a low gas consumption and is easy 
on tires makes a stronger appeal than do the heavier ma¬ 
chines. Some tires are now being made in Australia, 
the local factories supplying about half the demand of the 
country. 

As a rule, the automobile chassis only is imported from 
the States. This is because the Australian tariff has been 
framed so as to protect and develop the local body-making 
industry throughout the Commonwealth. The duty on 
an American or foreign car, body and all complete, is 
exceedingly heavy, while the duty on the chassis alone is 
moderate. The Australian manufacturers turn out good- 
looking automobile bodies. They are not so standardized 
as are ours, as the makers are willing to cater to individual 
tastes. 

Speaking of local manufactures reminds me of a great 
change that has taken place in Australia’s markets in the 
last few years. It used to be that every town of any size 
had hardware stores stocked with American-made farm 
implements and machinery. As I have said, our ploughs, 
reapers, saws, hatchets, and hammers are largely used, 
but they are not sold now in the same proportion as for- 
141 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

merly. This is because Australia has begun to use her 
abundant supplies of coal and iron to make her own steel. 
The business began in a big way with the Newcastle works 
of the great Broken Hill Mining Company. This con¬ 
cern was started soon after the discovery at Broken Hill, 
New South Wales, of some of the richest silver deposits 
on earth. The original company issued a small amount 
of stock at five hundred and fifty dollars a share. A year 
later one share sold for one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars and six years later was worth, with dividends and 
bonuses, the sum of seven and a half million dollars. 
Eleven companies, more or less interrelated, are now 
operating at Broken Hill, mining lead and zinc as well as 
silver. 

One of these, the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, 
Limited, opened iron works at Newcastle just after the 
outbreak of the World War. Cut off from other sources 
of supply, the various state railways poured in orders for 
material, and since then there have grown up about this 
and a similar plant at Lithgow affiliated industries pro¬ 
ducing iron and steel goods. One is making galvanized 
iron, so much of which is used all over the country for 
roofs, tanks, and even houses. Another is turning out 
wire nails and fencing. A third is kept busy producing 
car-wheel tires and axles. At Melbourne is the plant of 
the Sunshine Harvester Company, which employs four 
thousand workmen and makes tractors and other kinds 
of agricultural implements. In all, close to one hundred 
and thirty metal and machinery plants are fabricating 
domestic or imported iron and steel. 

In one way, the effort to develop home industries has 
helped American trade. It has created an enormous 
142 



This stripper harvester is a product of Australia’s attempt to make her 
own farm machinery, for it was manufactured at Melbourne. The dry 
climate makes it possible to thresh the wheat as it stands in the field. 



American agricultural machinery is widely used in Australia but must 
now compete with implements produced in the Commonwealth and pro¬ 
tected by the high tariff policy. 








Hobart has the reputation among Australians of being a slow, old- 
fashioned town, though recently it has been rejuvenated by the hydro¬ 
electric power development at Great Lake. 












AUSTRALIA AS OUR CUSTOMER 


demand for American machinery, tools, and other equip¬ 
ment with which to operate the new factories. Not long 
ago the state of Victoria ordered two enormous electric 
generators and other machinery for a power plant being 
erected at the so-called “brown coal” mines in that state 
to furnish current to Melbourne, ninety miles away. 

The Commonwealth government has set up a high tariff 
wall around everything manufactured in Australia, and is 
doing all it can to foster home industries. Some British 
companies have already established branch factories here 
to be inside the tariff wall. A great advantage of the 
branch plant is the fact that it brings the British exporter 
several thousand miles nearer to his Far-Eastern markets. 
When it comes to making goods for export in competition 
with other countries, however, the local manufacturer is 
somewhat handicapped by the higher labour costs in the 
Commonwealth. 

Great Britain has a preferential tariff arrangement with 
Australia so that certain of her goods come in at lower 
duties than those paid on similar goods from the United 
States or other countries. Yet, in spite of this “imperial 
preference,” our trade is healthy and growing. We sell 
Australia more than one fifth of all the goods she buys 
abroad and take a good proportion of the half billion 
dollars’ worth of wool, hides, pearl shell, and other raw 
products that she annually sends into the markets of the 
world. 


143 


CHAPTER XXI 


TASMANIA 

I WRITE this in one of the “farthest south” towns of 
the globe. Hobart is twenty-five hundred miles 
below the Equator, with nothing but ocean between 
it and the frozen lands of the Antarctic. It is now 
the end of April, late in the fall in this topsy-turvy land, 
but the grass is as green as in old Ireland in June, and, 
although Mount Wellington, back of the city, has a coat 
of snow, the sheep are everywhere feeding out-of-doors, 
and it is as warm as Ohio in May. 

As I look around me I cannot realize that this is Tas¬ 
mania, the country I studied about years ago as Van 
Diemen’s Land. I had read of the cruel treatment of the 
criminals sent out to it from England. I knew it was an 
island somewhere between the South Pole and Australia. 
I had an idea that it was bleak, bare, and inhospitable, 
the jumping-off place of creation, and it seemed that to 
visit it would hardly be worth the time and expense. 

I have changed my opinion. Tasmania is the Switzer¬ 
land of the southern Pacific, and one of the most health¬ 
ful and beautiful lands of the globe. It is a heart-shaped 
island, with its top less than two hundred miles from 
Australia and its point toward the Pole. At the southern¬ 
most tip the Pacific and the Indian oceans meet. Tas¬ 
mania is all mountains, valleys, and glens; with waterfalls 
and lakes, forests of fern trees, trout brooks, and hunting 
144 


TASMANIA 

parks. Its coast is deeply indented with fiords and har¬ 
bours, and the tourist bureaus have made it a great health 
resort. The whole country is spotted with boarding 
houses and hotels, and during the summer months, from 
December until May, it is swarming with visitors. One 
can go almost anywhere by motor, coach, horseback, or 
rail, and always have good company. There are also 
many tourists on foot. 

Although more than twice the size of Belgium,Tasmania 
has only about two hundred thousand people, compared 
with Belgium's seven millions. Hobart, the capital and 
largest city on the island, has about fifty-two thousand. 
It lies on a fine harbour in a nest of hills on the banks of 
the Derwent. Back of the river rises a mountain, the 
rocks of which look like the pipes of an organ. The town 
is well laid out in checkerboard fashion; it runs up hill 
and down and here and there takes a jump out into the 
country. 

I went from one end of the city to the other one day on a 
street car. The people of Hobart pride themselves on 
having the first electric railroad line in their latitude. 
The cars are not like any we have in the United States. 
They were made in England and look as though they had 
been pounded out by a crossroads blacksmith. They are 
enormous double-deckers, and their sides are plastered 
with advertisements. I rode on the roof right under a 
great steel bow, which, pressing against the overhead 
wire, takes the place of our trolley. I timed the trip 
and found we made speed only when going down hill. 
Most of the time our motion was a succession of spasmodic 
jerks, as though the electricity were afflicted with fits. 

Near Hobart was Port Arthur, the chief penal colony 

145 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

of the old Van Diemen's Land. Its site can be reached by 
a short sail down the Derwent River. Some of the convict 
buildings are still standing, and one can get a guide there 
who will describe the terrible punishments that drove 
many of the prisoners to suicide. They were flogged, 
tortured with dripping water, and loaded with heavy 
chains. They were kept in dark cells, were made to pull 
railway cars, and were subjected to all sorts of inhuman 
treatment. Many of the best families in Tasmania to-day 
are descendants of these convicts. Some of them will 
acknowledge their ancestry, but if one asks them the crime 
for which their forebears were transported each will in¬ 
variably reply that it was for stealing a loaf of bread. 
It would have taken a good-sized bakehouse running 
steadily to supply the many loaves said to have been stolen 
by these early Tasmanians. Transportation of criminals 
ceased in 1853, and all the arrivals since then are people 
who have come of their own accord. To-day the number 
of crimes is no greater than in other parts of the Empire. 
Indeed, the Tasmania of to-day is rather pious than 
otherwise. The majority of the people are either immi¬ 
grants or the descendants of immigrants from England, 
Ireland, Scotland, or Australia. 

The Hobart museum is a Mecca to students of eth¬ 
nology, for here is preserved the body of the last of the 
aborigines. When the island was a penal colony there 
were still a number of the original blacks, but they were 
so corrupted by escaped convicts that they became a 
menace to the whites. In 1830 a drive of three thousand 
Europeans was organized against them and all who sur¬ 
vived were finally exiled to a dreary, windswept island 
in Bass Strait. Here their health suffered because they 
146 



Unlike continental Australia, Tasmania has a moist climate. This 
has given the island dense forests of eucalyptus and other woods which 
furnish railroad ties and paving blocks to her sister states. 










Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, lies on the south coast of the island 
between the great hills on both sides of the Derwent River. Its harbour is 
second only to that of Sydney. 



Tasmania deserves its name of the “Apple Isle,” for it annually ex¬ 
ports many shiploads of apples to the mainland and London. The 
orchardist often makes a profit of upwards of $200 an acre. 






TASMANIA 


were forced to wear clothes, which they never took off, no 
matter how filthy they became. The poor creatures were 
also the easy prey of the sealers and escaped criminals 
that came now and then to their place of exile, and at the 
end of fifteen years only forty-four survived. A woman, 
Truganini, the last of the race, died at the age of seventy- 
three, in 1876. Her skeleton is in the museum and the 
scientists come here to study the skull. The native Tas¬ 
manians belonged to an even more backward race and 
stage of civilization than the aborigines of Australia. 

The island state deserves its name of the "Apple 
Island.” It is a voyage of more than a month by sea from 
Hobart to London, but apples are sent to England every 
year by the shipload in refrigerator steamers. The annual 
crop now amounts to more than two million bushels and 
brings in close to two and a half million dollars. It would 
surprise our orchardists to see how close the Tasmanians 
plant apple trees. They set them out ten feet apart, in¬ 
stead of twenty or forty feet, as with us, and I am told 
that as many as six hundred bushels are sometimes 
gathered from a single acre. The trees begin to bear in 
their third or fourth year and keep on bearing for twenty- 
five or thirty years. 

Tasmania ships much green fruit to Australia. It raises 
quantities of pears, plums, cherries, and currants, and in 
recent years has been exporting several hundred thousand 
dollars" worth of jam, not only to the United Kingdom, 
but to South Africa, France, and even to the United 
States. By the law of the Commonwealth every jar of 
jam or marmalade exported must bear a label stating 
that it was made in Australia. Tasmania, which had 
built up a reputation for her preserves before the federa- 
147 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

tion of the states, does not like this law, for it seems to 
give all the credit to Australia. The jam makers get 
around it by printing their labels with the word “Tas¬ 
mania” in large letters and “ Australia'' in smaller letters. 

These people are excellent farmers and their crops are 
usually good. The wheatfields cover only about twenty- 
two thousand acres, but the average production is more 
than eighteen bushels per acre, which is far ahead of the 
yield in the other Australian states. Large quantities of 
barley and oats are grown. 

This island ranks with Vermont as a place for breed¬ 
ing fine sheep. It has many sheep worth upward of a 
thousand dollars apiece. They are sold to the mainland 
states and the countries of South America, pedigreed rams 
often bringing as much as five thousand dollars each. 
The land holdings are smaller than in Australia or New 
Zealand, so that the Tasmanian sheep breeders can there¬ 
fore take better care of their stock. This is a great turnip 
country, and in this part of the world a good turnip coun¬ 
try is a good sheep country. There are fields about 
Hobart that have produced as much as sixteen tons of 
turnips to the acre, and in northeastern Tasmania twenty- 
five tons have been grown on an acre. 

Until 1872 the minerals of Tasmania were practically 
unknown, but in that year on Mount Bischoff, in the 
northwestern part of the island, tin mines were opened 
which have proved to be the largest tin mines of the world. 
They paid their first dividend in 1878, and are still yield¬ 
ing large profits. 

Another big mineral property is that at Mount Lyell, 
which was discovered in 1881. It was first worked as a 
gold mine, but was afterward found to contain copper and 
148 


TASMANIA 


silver. When these ores were smelted the results were so 
gratifying that the original company was reorganized 
with a capital of about four and a half million dollars, a 
railroad was built from the mines to the smelting works, 
and within a short time the company had five smelters 
treating eleven thousand tons of ore a month. This com¬ 
pany paid its first dividend in 1897 and by the middle of 
the year following it had distributed more than a million 
dollars to its stockholders. It now pays out many thou¬ 
sands a year in salaries and wages and is making money 
right along from its copper. 

I have made some inquiries about lands, both mineral 
and agricultural, and I find that all the best land has 
been taken up and that farms and city property bring 
almost as much as in the United States. For years one 
trouble with Tasmania was the fact that its lands were 
held in big blocks by rich men who would not sell. But 
now, under the closer settlement laws, the Minister of 
Lands may acquire, either compulsorily or by agreement, 
private land in any part of the island to be leased to 
settlers. The land taken over by the government is 
divided into farm allotments, the value of which may 
not exceed twenty thousand dollars. These are rented 
on ninety-nine-year leases. Unfortunately, the govern¬ 
ment is not yet rich enough to buy up many of the large 
estates. 

One of the troubles about taking up government lands 
is the dense growth of timber which must be cut down 
before they can be used. The climate here is moist and 
the undergrowth is thicker than in most parts of our 
country. Much of the timber is eucalyptus, but there 
are also beeches, dogwoods, oaks, and other hard woods. 

149 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

There are millions of acres of virgin forests, some of which 
are now being cut to furnish railway ties to other Aus¬ 
tralian states and to South Africa. 

The cost of living is as high in Tasmania as in the other 
Australian states, but wages are lower. The best paid 
labourers are the skilled iron and electrical workers, and 
they get a maximum of only thirty dollars a week. As to 
clerks and bookkeepers, they are poorly paid, and there 
are few clerical positions open. Domestic servants are in 
demand and their wages are fair. 

The Australians of the mainland seem to consider the 
people of Tasmania as slow as the New Yorkers do the 
Philadelphians. They have a saying: “Don’t send a live 
man to Tasmania; send flowers.” I have heard it said 
that the island used to be peopled by women, children, and 
graybeards; for as soon as the boys reached man’s estate 
they crossed Bass Strait to Victoria or New South Wales. 
This, however, is no longer true; Tasmania is waking up, 
and its people think it has a big future as a manufacturing 
centre for all Australia. Its numerous lakes and rivers 
can furnish abundant water power at low cost and the 
development of its hydro-electric resources is going for¬ 
ward rapidly. All kinds of electrical appliances, which are 
regarded more or less as luxuries even in the large cities 
of the mainland, are conveniences of every-day life in 
many small towns of Tasmania. 

The state government has already built a hydro-electric 
power station at Great Lake, about sixty miles north 
of Hobart. This delivers thirty thousand horse power 
to the Electrolytic Zinc Corporation, whose works are 
the largest of the kind in existence. It also supplies a big 
carbide-manufacturing plant as well as power for Hobart’s 
150 



Thursday Island is the commercial centre for all Torres Strait. About 
its deep harbour has grown up a clean, well-regulated town, the home of 
representatives of all the peoples of the South Pacific. 



The youngest of these island maidens has to go through several months 
more of suffering before she can appear with her complete blouse of tattoo¬ 
ing. The design must be pricked in with a thorn driven under her skin 









Experienced men claim they can tell by the appearance of the outside of 
certain oyster shells that they contain pearls. Natives are not allowed to 
open such finds, which are reserved for the white overseer. 



TASMANIA 


street cars and lighting system. Woollen mills, a big 
chocolate factory, and other industrial plants will get 
their power from this station. So will Launceston as soon 
as the transmission line from the lake to the northern 
city is completed. Launceston has its own power plant 
but this does not give sufficient current for its needs. 
Ultimately the capacity of the Great Lake power house 
will be raised to seventy-two thousand horse power. 
Other projects are planned, for Tasmania’s hydro-electric 
resources are estimated at more than two hundred thou¬ 
sand horse power. There is even talk of transmitting 
some of the power from the island by cable to the main¬ 
land. 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE PEARL FISHERIES OF THURSDAY ISLAND 

HE metropolis of the pearl-fishing industry of 



the Pacific Ocean is Thursday Island. It lies in 


Torres Strait off the north coast of Queensland 


JL and is part of that state. I visited it on my 
way to Java and the East Indies, but its story rightly 
belongs with that of Australia, and so I tell it here. 

If you will turn to the map you will see that Torres 
Strait, which separates Australia from New Guinea, is 
spotted with islands. There are hundreds of them, some 
inhabited by strange tribes and others sparsely settled by 
Australians. There are islands for every day of the 
week, and when we came into the harbour of Thursday 
Island we were told we must go on to Friday Island for 
quarantine. 

Thursday Island is scarcely more than a tiny speck in 
Torres Strait, but owing to its excellent harbour it is a 
port of call for ships on their way through the passage. 
All the steamers that go about north Australia to Europe 
stop here. There are also steamers for Japan, China, the 
Philippines, and other parts of Asia, as well as vessels 
bound for New Guinea and the islands of the South Seas. 

The island has a military importance, as it commands 
Torres Strait and is one of the defences of the British 
possessions in this part of the world. The harbour is 
large enough and deep enough for the biggest warships; it 


152 


PEARL FISHERIES, THURSDAY ISLAND 

has been strongly fortified and has also a coaling 
station. 

Through its commerce and pearl fisheries a considerable 
town has grown up on the island. Two piers have been 
built out into the harbour for the accommodation of the 
smaller steamers, and back of these are the warehouses 
and stores. There are six hotels, three or four churches, 
and the large house of the governor, who is a Queens¬ 
land official. This stands on a little hill at one end, not 
far from the barracks, great two-story buildings with 
galleries around them, looking not unlike one of our 
second-class summer hotels. 

The port has one of the most mixed populations of this 
part of the world. I had no sooner stepped on the wharf 
than 1 was surrounded by representatives of all the 
peoples of the South Pacific. There were brown men, 
black men, and yellow men; Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, 
East Indians, Fijians, Papuans, and Australian aborig¬ 
ines. There were pearl divers, beachcombers, beche-de- 
mer fishermen, and adventurers of all colours and races. 
Thursday Island is a sort of Suez for an area of nearly 
twenty thousand square miles of island-sprinkled ocean 
between New Guinea and Australia. The town itself is 
far cleaner than many of its population, being quite free 
from epidemics, for the Queensland government rigidly en¬ 
forces the health regulations. Native councillors elected 
by the people must see that the villagers keep their 
houses, food, and clothing clean, that they go regularly to 
church, and that they send their children to school. 
These black officials strut about in red jerseys with the 
word “Councillor” in white letters across the front. 

The chief interest in Thursday Island lies in its pearl 
153 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 


fisheries. Pearls and shells are the principal subjects of 
discussion, and the finding of a large pearl is talked 
of everywhere. The best pearl shells are taken from 
the coral islands and lagoons. The oysters grow to an 
enormous size, often having shells as big as a tin wash 
basin. The average weight of a pair of shells is about two 
pounds. The oysters lie on the bottom of the sea or cling 
to the coral rocks. They do not like sand or mud, and 
will not thrive where the tide shifts the bottom about. 
They grow largest where they can fasten themselves to 
coral formations. There are many caverns in the reefs, 
and the oysters attach themselves to the roofs of these 
submarine caves in clusters of a dozen or more. They 
cling to the rocks by a cartilage, or muscle, that extends 
out near the hinge of the shell, and then branches off into 
multitudinous threads, each of which glues itself to the 
rock. 

Several years ago a perfect pearl, weighing thirty-two 
and a half grains and valued at five thousand dollars, was 
taken out of the Thursday Island grounds. But this was 
a rare find, indeed, for most of the money in getting pearl 
oysters comes from the shells and not from the occasional 
pearls within them. It is estimated that only one shell 
in a thousand contains a pearl. In a recent year the 
value of Australia’s export of pearl shell was nearly two 
million dollars, while the value of the pearls shipped in 
the same year was only about one sixth as much. 

Shell is cash at Thursday Island, and in the world’s 
markets the better quality commands from five hundred 
to a thousand dollars a ton. It is used for making 
mother-of-pearl knife handles, buttons, and in all sorts of 
inlaid work. Trading vessels sail from island to island 
154 


PEARL FISHERIES, THURSDAY ISLAND 

collecting the shell from the natives, in exchange for 
tobacco, calico, and other goods. The traders pay from 
sixty to one hundred dollars per ton for shell that will sell 
in London for about ten times as much. 

The Japanese have almost monopolized the diving at 
Thursday Island, for they will stay longer under water 
and risk more than any one else. Among the divers are 
also many South Sea Islanders, besides Danes, Swedes, 
and Malays. The proprietors of the pearl ships say the 
Japanese are the best, and that the others often pretend 
to be sick. 

The fishing is done by fleets consisting of one large 
boat, of, say, one hundred tons, and several smaller ones. 
The divers work from the small boats, each of which has a 
pump to supply them with air when they are under the 
surface. As even the small boats cost several thousand 
dollars each, the business takes considerable capital. 
The diver prepares for his plunge by slipping on over 
heavy flannels a diving suit to which ropes and air tubes 
are attached. He wears a metal helmet with circles of 
glass set in it so that he may see about him. His boots 
are soled with plates of copper or lead weighing about 
twenty-eight pounds to each foot, while the total weight 
of his equipment may be more than one hundred and 
fifty pounds. 

When a diver goes down he takes with him a net bag, 
which he fills with shells. He then jerks the signal rope and 
is pulled up. The shells are counted and weighed, and he 
is paid according to what he has found. One diver has a 
record of having gathered one thousand pairs of shells in a 
day, but half this number is considered a good showing. 

Even with the most modern equipment, one hundred 
155 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

and eighty feet is considered the maximum depth at which 
divers can work safely, although some have gone to a depth 
of two hundred or more feet. As the shallower beds have 
given out, the divers have had to go deeper and deeper and 
Queensland has made a law forbidding diving below the 
safety level. But the state courts have held that a diver 
must actually be seen below that depth before violation of 
th'e statute can be proved, and, as the reefs are quite remote 
and supervision is virtually impossible, the men often take 
great risks. At one hundred feet below the surface the 
pressure is sixty pounds to the square inch, and it in¬ 
creases as the diver goes deeper. At a certain depth he 
is attacked by pains in his muscles and joints, deafness 
and spells of fainting, and a kind of paralysis called 
“diver's palsy." If he is brought too quickly to the sur¬ 
face the sudden removal of the pressure may cause pro¬ 
fuse bleeding or even death. Every year ten per cent, of 
the Torres Strait divers die from the immediate effects of 
their calling. 

I am told that the profession has other great dangers. 
The Strait swarms with tiger sharks, which here grow to a 
length of twenty feet. They follow the pearl luggers, at¬ 
tracted by the pieces of salt beef now and then thrown 
from the boats. Unless very hungry, they trouble only 
the naked divers and the man in a suit can open an aircock 
and make enough bubbles to frighten them away. When 
the naked diver is attacked by a shark he stirs up the water 
and thus often confuses his enemy so that he gets back 
alive, although he may perhaps be maimed for life by the 
teeth of the terrible fish. As a rule the divers are not 
afraid of the sharks, but they do not spear fish at the bot¬ 
tom of the sea without first ascertaining whether there 
156 


PEARL FISHERIES, THURSDAY ISLAND 

are sharks about, for the dead fish would surely draw 
them. 

Another terror is the great squid. This marine monster 
fastens its long tentacles upon anything within its reach. 
If disturbed it vomits an inky fluid which discolours the 
waters about, and the diver, bewildered in the gloom, is 
liable to fall against the rocks and be caught. 

In the native pearl fisheries much of the diving is done 
by women, who go down without suits. They fasten 
stones to their feet to enable them to sink, but do not plug 
up their nostrils and ears as do the pearl divers of India. 
Most of them can stay under water only a few seconds 
more than a minute, and they cannot work in such deep 
waters as the men in diving dress. 

Pearls worth one hundred dollars are quite common and 
a big one, lately discovered, sold for twenty-five hundred 
dollars. Since an oyster may contain a thousand-dollar 
pearl, and the pearls are so small they can be easily stolen, 
the opening of the shells is carefully watched. A knife 
much like a common table knife, with a thin, flexible blade 
and a stong handle, is used. A good operator can open a 
ton of shells in a day and not miss a pearl. The shells con¬ 
taining the pearls have sometimes a curious appearance so 
that experts can tell before they are opened that they have 
pearls in them. Such shells are always laid aside to be 
handled by the proprietor or the foreman of the sloop. 

Sometimes one oyster will contain a dozen small pearls 
and even more. Such oysters are often diseased and 
their shells are rough, but on the other hand a perfectly 
healthy oyster may contain a fine round pearl of large size. 
Many people believe that some irritating substance is the 
cause of every pearl. Looked at through a microscope, a 
157 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

pearl cut in two shows concentric layers like an onion with 
a hole, or sometimes a grain of sand in the centre. It is 
supposed that the grain of sand irritates the oyster so that 
it exudes carbonate of lime, coating the scratchy particle 
over and over until there has been formed a smooth round 
ball that does not hurt. 


158 



The islands about Torres Strait are probably volcanic fragments of the 
immense continent supposed once to have connected Asia and Australia. 
Only the larger ones are inhabited. 




The natives’ community house is in the centre of most South Sea 
island villages. All discussions, feasts, and gatherings are held here, the 
traveller is free to use it, and the peddler finds it at once a hotel and show 
room. 





CHAPTER XXIII 
Australia’s island wards 

M OST people associate Thursday Island with its 
great neighbour New Guinea, the second largest 
island on the globe. Of what we might call 
mainland New Guinea I have already written 
in my book on Java and the East Indies. You will recall 
that it is divided into Dutch New Guinea, Papua, and 
former Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land. Both Papua and the 
former German possessions are now administered by Aus¬ 
tralia. Besides former Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land, the Ter¬ 
ritory of New Guinea embraces the Bismarck Archipelago 
and some of the Solomon Islands. Germany owned also 
the Marshall and the Caroline Islands, lying north of the 
Equator, which are now governed by Japan, while former 
German Samoa is under the jurisdiction of New Zealand. 
Australia has the responsibility of looking after nearly one 
hundred thousand square miles of territory outside the 
Commonwealth, and although she is determined to re¬ 
main an "all-white” continent, she has under her juris¬ 
diction thousands of primitive coloured peoples. 

The natives of former Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land are, if 
anything, wilder and more savage than those of Papua. 
Thousands of them go naked save for breech cloths of 
bark for the men and short petticoats of woven grass for 
the women. Along the extreme northern coast are tribes 
that are entirely nude, with the exception of a shell neck- 
159 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

lace and a few bird-of-paradise feathers stuck in their 
woolly hair. Some tribes paint themselves in stripes of 
white, red, yellow, and black, and others scar themselves 
with flints or by fire. 

1 have photographs of native houses recently taken in 
New Guinea. Some of these houses are of great size, and 
many families live under one roof. The buildings are fre¬ 
quently set upon piles, a platform of poles being first con¬ 
structed, a skeleton framework built upon this, and mats of 
woven leaves or grass fastened to it. The mats are so ar¬ 
ranged that they can be raised or lowered to keep out the 
mosquitoes and the flies, which are exceedingly trouble¬ 
some. In other parts of the island there are houses built 
in the trees, to which the people retreat in times of danger. 

The different tribes are frequently at war with one an¬ 
other, and the missionaries tell me that sometimes these 
feuds go on between tribes and villages for generations. 
Cannibalism exists in some localities, though not to a great 
extent. The British have observed it among the people 
along the Gulf of Papua, and it is found also in northern 
New Guinea. The ordinary food of the natives is about 
the same as that of the Samoans, their chief diet being 
the yam, the taro, which is a kind of potato, and the 
banana. 

The islands of the Bismarck Archipelago have some 
tribes stranger even than those of New Guinea. On one of 
them, according to good authorities, the girls are kept in 
wicker cages from the age of six or eight years until they 
are married. The cages are built inside large houses set 
aside for the purpose. The girls are let out once a day to 
bathe, but otherwise they are not permitted to leave their 
traps. Their food is handed in through the bars, and they 
160 


AUSTRALIA’S ISLAND WARDS 

pace up and down at times like caged lions. These cages 
are under the charge of the old women of the tribe, who 
see that the girls do not flirt with the passers-by or peepers- 
in. The young men have the right to look at the cages 
now and then, and probably, after making proper presents 
to the guards and the parents of the girl, one may woo the 
maiden of his choice through the bamboo meshes. 

I am told that these girls do not suffer in health from 
their imprisonment, and that notwithstanding their seclu¬ 
sion they make very good wives, and later on are by no 
means averse to having their daughters caged up as they 
were. In this hot climate the people mature rapidly, and the 
marriageable age for a girl is eleven or twelve years. The 
unmarried damsel of fifteen is considered an old maid. 

New Britain, the principal island of this group, is three 
hundred and fifty miles long. New Ireland, the next in 
size, is about two hundred miles long and only twenty 
miles wide. New Britain is traversed by a mountain 
chain whose tallest peak is The Father. It is seventy-five 
hundred feet high and is an active volcano. 

In New Ireland the people of each village are divided 
into two classes and marriage between the classes is strictly 
forbidden. If a woman marries outside her class the pun¬ 
ishment is death, but the male offender merely pays a fine. 
Both women and men go naked, and cannibalism is com¬ 
mon. The people live in small huts shaped like beehives, 
surrounded by bamboo fences. The young unmarried men 
have common houses where they live together. 

Most of the few hundred Europeans living in the Archi¬ 
pelago are gathered at Rabaul, in New Britain. This is a 
well-planned, spick-and-span town, once the capital of 
German New Guinea. Here one of the most interesting 
161 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

characters of the Pacific islands had her headquarters. 
This was a woman of remarkable courage and business 
ability, half Samoan, who back in the eighties started 
German New Guinea on the road to prosperity in the coco¬ 
nut business. “Queen Emma,” as she was called, was a 
most enterprising trader, and it was from her that the 
German New Guinea Development Company, in which 
the former Kaiser was said to be a heavy investor, bought 
trading rights. The enormous areas under her manage¬ 
ment were finally forbidden to German officers because of 
their cruelty to the natives, whom Queen Emma always 
championed. She was almost worshipped by the islanders, 
of whom she employed thousands. At length, however, 
she married a handsome young German officer and went to 
Europe to take a high place in the society of Berlin. She 
died several years ago at Monte Carlo. 

New Ireland, too, has its romance, for it was here that 
some forty years ago a wealthy Frenchman, the Marquis 
de Rays, tried to start the Free Colony of Oceania. In 
his prospectus New Ireland was described as an earthly 
paradise in which each settler was to have fifty acres with 
a house and every comfort. Would-be colonists from the 
crowded lands and streets of France, Belgium, and Italy 
were numerous. Money was poured into the enterprise, 
which, however, suffered from mismanagement and poor 
organization. Arrived at the spot chosen on the un¬ 
sheltered southeast point of the island, the colonists' ship 
dumped its cargo on the open beach. Steam cranes, 
sugar-mill machinery, handsome carriages, agricultural im¬ 
plements, bricks, crates of food, and immense piles of 
clothing lay in confusion under the tropical sun. Boxes 
of handles for shovels and axes were landed, but neither 
162 



Among some Pacific island men a big waist is considered the sign of a 
glutton, so they lace themselves in tightly with belts of fibre. This man, 
owing to his necklaces, looped earrings, and unusual nose plugs, is the 
envy of his village. 








The Tasman Sea is named for Abel Tasman, greatest of all Dutch 
navigators. He discovered, also, New Zealand and Tasmania and was 
the first man to circumnavigate Australia. 



At Wellington, capital and chief port of New Zealand, the hills 
come so close to the water that some of the streets run through tunnels 
and many of the houses are seven hundred feet up. 









AUSTRALIA’S ISLAND WARDS 

shovels nor axes could be found to go with them. There 
were stacks of wheelbarrows without wheels. Much of 
the clothing was heavy and unsuited to the climate. The 
only thing entirely complete to the last detail was the 
building material for a cathedral, a gift to the settlers from 
the French people! It was never put up. 

Many of the intending colonists did not even leave the 
ship. Some died of malaria, for quinine had been left out 
of the medical stores. The rest of them scattered, a num¬ 
ber going on to Australia. Only one, a mere boy, decided 
to stay on, and he at last grew to be one of the wealthiest 
men of New Guinea. 

A little to the east of the Bismarck Archipelago are the 
Solomon Islands. The principal island in this group is 
Bougainville, which is bigger than Porto Rico. It is quite 
rugged, having two constantly active volcanoes and one 
mountain of an altitude of more than two miles above sea 
level. The natives here are of the same race as those on the 
adjoining islands, and equally as savage. In most cases 
the men go naked, and in some of the islands the women 
wear no clothing until they are married. Both men and 
women pierce their ears, the holes in the lobes being grad¬ 
ually stretched until they are as big around as a napkin 
ring. Among some tribes the nose is pierced and a long 
pin of bone or shell is stuck through it. There is some 
tattooing, and scars made by burning are considered fine 
ornaments. 

The Solomon Islanders are barely out of cannibalism, 
and head-hunting was not long ago the profession and 
pleasure of most of the young men. Polygamy is prac¬ 
tised, and some of the chiefs have as many as a hundred 
wives. The islanders do some farming, raising bananas, 
163 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

yams, and taro. They are good fishermen, and gather 
shells and pearls for sale. 

Coconuts are the chief product of the Solomon Islands, 
although it has been proved that rubber, sugar cane, and 
cotton will flourish there. But expansion of the planta¬ 
tions cannot be undertaken without a large supply of 
labour. 

Australia has introduced fairer labour conditions than 
she found throughout the islands she now administers. 
Special ordinances provide for a ten-hour day, a weekly 
day of rest, and observance of public holidays. Board, 
lodging, and medical attendance are free and minimum 
and maximum wages have been prescribed. There is 
neither slavery nor forced labour, and the recruiting of 
native labour is strictly regulated. 

Missionaries, especially those of the Methodist Church, 
are at work in all the islands. Their faithful labour has 
gone on for many years, and there are now a large number 
of native evangelists. One of the missionaries tells me 
that the people are being slowly but surely civilized, and 
that a number of them are Christians. 


164 


CHAPTER XXIV 


ACROSS THE TASMAN SEA TO WELLINGTON 

I CAME from Australia to Wellington, the capital of 
New Zealand, on a vessel as well furnished, as well 
kept, and as well managed as any of the floating 
palaces that steam on our Great Lakes. But the 
voyage was far from being as smooth as a sail on the Lakes. 
The South Pacific Ocean is much like the North Atlantic. 
It is wild and stormy at times, and I found it a great con¬ 
trast to the calm waters of the tropics through which I 
had passed on my way to Australia. The clear skies of 
the Equator and their golden stars had disappeared, and 
in their place were heavens plated with lead and heavy, 
low-hanging clouds full of wind. 

How the steamer rolled! There were ladder-like racks 
on the table to hold the dishes at every meal, and we had 
to lift our soup plates to our chins, balancing the steaming 
liquid to the movement of the boat. One night a buxom 
young lady, who was strikingly decollete, sat opposite me 
at the table. The ship gave a sudden lurch and her soup 
went down—outside. Another girl lost her coffee in my 
lap. In my cabin it made me almost seasick to watch my 
pajamas swing violently to and fro on their hooks. As 
I walked the deck I had to bend this way and that to keep 
my balance, and when I sat down the steward tied my 
chair to the rail outside the saloon wall to keep me from 
sliding down to the edge of the boat. The spray dashed 
165 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

over everything, and, as a New Zealand girl said, “ It was 
really na-a-hsty!” 

Still, the southern ocean is grand. Stand on deck be¬ 
side me and take a look at a storm off the coast of New 
Zealand. The green water of the shallow sea rolls toward 
us in vast waves. It is a seething, boiling mass. Our 
steamer mounts sea-green hills spotted with foam, and 
plunges down into valleys blanketed with white. Great 
billows chase one another like racehorses over the roads of 
the sea. They roar as they run with a noise like the thun¬ 
der of a thousand Niagaras. 

Now two waves meet. The foam dashes up in a spray 
and turns to rainbows in the sun, which now and then 
breaks through the clouds. The rainbows are so close 
that we can almost wash our fingers in them. They 
come and they go, a hundred different rainbows in as 
many minutes. They dance in and dance out. They 
ride for a moment on the crests of the waters, only to shine, 
disappear, and give place to others. How the ship strug¬ 
gles and groans! Every now and then a mist closes 
down upon us, and our foghorn blows continually. We 
are hours in making a few miles and are tossed about all 
night by the storm. 

I suppose there is not much chance that the Tasman 
Sea will change its ways, but it has been proposed to change 
its name. After the World War it was suggested that it 
be re-christened the “AnzacSea” in honour of the troops 
sent from this part of the world to fight with the Allies. 
You remember that their organization was officially 
known as the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps. The 
supplies sent to the first contingent at Gallipoli were 
marked with the initial letters: A. N. Z. A. C. and thus 
166 


ACROSS THE TASMAN SEA TO WELLINGTON 

the “Anzacs” got their name. Anzac Day, April 25th, is 
now observed as a national holiday in New Zealand in 
memory of those who gave their lives at Gallipoli, and in 
Palestine, Egypt, and France. The day is kept more like 
a Sunday than as an ordinary holiday, and the use of the 
word “Anzac” for trade purposes is prohibited by law. 
I am told that some people even disapprove of its being 
used as a geographical term. 

The morning was clear when we sailed into Wellington 
harbour and cast anchor before the capital city of the 
island dominion. On going ashore I found Wellington 
rather like an American than a British town. It has more 
than one hundred thousand people and is growing like a 
green bay tree. The city lies in a nest in the hills, with its 
business streets round the harbour, some of them built 
upon land reclaimed from the sea. The houses are mostly 
of wood, and one of the government buildings is said to be 
the biggest wooden structure in the world. The wharves 
are of wood, but they are big enough to accommodate the 
largest steamers, and the water is so deep that ships come 
close to the shore and anchor within a stone's throw of the 
post-office. 

Both Wellington and Auckland, the chief ports of New 
Zealand, have fine harbours, although neither is as good 
as the one at Sydney. The New Zealanders say that when 
they go to Sydney they pin a tag on their coats, reading: 
“Yes, I am pleased with your harbour,” and thus avoid 
answering the same question twenty times an hour. Wel¬ 
lington is as windy as Chicago, and Australians say they 
can always tell a man from Wellington because, no matter 
where he may be, every time he turns a street corner he 
grabs his hat to keep it from blowing away. 

167 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

The stores here are not unlike ours. Their windows are 
well dressed and their goods attractively displayed. In 
the business section there are roofs of corrugated iron 
built out over the sidewalks so that shoppers are protected 
from the sun or rain in going from store to store. The 
merchants carry large stocks, and seem to be prosperous. 
There are many jewellery stores, book stores, and millinery 
shops. The butcher shops are walled and floored with 
tiles, and the beef and mutton sold in them are equal to 
any you can get in Chicago or London, and much cheaper. 
The grocery stores are clean and up to date, while the dis¬ 
plays on the fruit stands make my mouth water. They 
have home-grown apples and grapes, and tropical fruits of 
all kinds from the Tonga Islands and the Fijis. 

The city is lighted by electricity. It has a good water 
supply and a municipally owned street-car system, one 
line of which runs through a tunnel under a mountain and 
out to a popular bathing beach. Wellington has gone far 
ahead of our cities in municipal ownership. Besides its 
street-car system, it owns its water supply and drainage 
works, its cemeteries, baths, and slaughter houses. Many 
of its homes are lighted from a municipal central station, 
and it has a monopoly on the local milk business. The 
city buys and distributes all the milk produced within a 
radius of about twenty-five miles. Any surplus is made 
into butter and cheese, and an ice plant is operated in con¬ 
nection with the dairy business. 

I have been told that the reason for the number of 
wooden buildings here is the fact that years ago a severe 
earthquake did great damage and made the people afraid 
to put up high structures of brick and steel. But the 
Wellingtonians of to-day laugh at the idea of another 
168 


ACROSS THE TASMAN SEA TO WELLINGTON 


earthquake, and substantial buildings are going up all over 
the city. A big new Parliament House is about completed, 
and the government is carrying out a large construction 
programme for the better housing of its various offices. 
One of the finest buildings in the Dominion is the home of 
the mail and the telegraph services—a structure of native 
stone covering half a block. 


169 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND 

O N THE map New Zealand looks like a little 
stepdaughter of Australia, and most of us 
think of the two countries as near neighbours. 
We associate them in our minds as belonging 
together, and imagine that the trip from one to the other 
is no more than a week-end journey. 

This is all wrong. New Zealand is twelve hundred 
miles from Australia. It is a separate dominion of the 
British Empire, and entirely independent of the Com¬ 
monwealth. The voyage from Sydney to Wellington takes 
four days, or almost the time of the fastest crossing of 
the Atlantic from New York. The two countries are as 
unlike in climate as South Carolina and Norway. The 
northern tip of Australia is nearer the Equator than 
Florida, while the southernmost island of New Zealand is 
in the relative position of Portland, Oregon. 

New Zealand is a land of lofty mountains, geysers, 
volcanoes, rivers, fiords, and glaciers. Australia has no 
geysers, glaciers, or volcanoes; her mountains are not high, 
she has but few rivers, and the heart of the country is a 
vast desert. New Zealand has seventeen ports with har¬ 
bours deep enough to accommodate ocean-going vessels; 
Australia's seven largest ports have comparatively shal¬ 
low harbours, which have required much dredging. Aus¬ 
tralia has more than three hundred and ninety species of 
170 



New Zealand is one of the most remarkable botanical regions of the 
world and nowhere are there more beautiful forests. The giant fern is so 
common that it is the emblem of the country. 






The southwest coast of the South Island rivals both Norway and 
Switzerland in its scenic beauty. There the glaciers have made fourteen 
great sounds, walled with steep cliffs and lofty mountain peaks. 







THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND 

lizards and a hundred different kinds of snakes, most of 
them poisonous. New Zealand has no snakes of any kind. 
The aborigines of Australia are among the most primitive 
peoples of the world, but the Maoris, the natives of New 
Zealand, are able to take a part in the government of their 
country. 

Yet there are also many points of likeness between these 
two South Sea members of the British Empire, especially 
in their forms of government. Each country has a 
Governor-General appointed by the British Crown and 
each has a Parliament of two houses. In both the execu¬ 
tive power is in the hands of a ministry, that is, the leaders 
of the majority parties in the Parliaments. Each main¬ 
tains a separate tariff against Great Britain and neither 
tolerates the least interference of the Crown in its domestic 
affairs, though both are consulted by Great Britain on 
matters affecting the British Empire. Furthermore, both 
Australia and New Zealand are the scenes of all sorts of 
experiments in government ownership and control and 
each is noted for its liberal labour laws. The New Zealand 
government owns the railroads, the telegraphs, and the 
telephones; it competes with private companies in the 
insurance business, owns and operates the coal mines on 
the public lands, and undertakes all water-power develop¬ 
ments. 

To most of us New Zealand is an empty land in a far- 
distant part of the globe. I find it filled with a busy people 
and moving rapidly along on the lightning express of civi¬ 
lization. Neither is it so far away, after all. It is now 
only eighteen days from San Francisco, only about thirty- 
five days from London, and good steamship lines connect it 
with all parts of the globe. From the New Zealand ports 
171 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

there are regular sailings to London by way of the Cape of 
Good Hope, by the Suez Canal, or the Panama Canal. 
Still another route to Europe is across the Pacific from 
Auckland to Vancouver, a voyage of more than six thou¬ 
sand miles; thence by rail to Montreal, Quebec, or New 
York, and then across the Atlantic. Scores of steamers 
go from port to port along the wild New Zealand coast, 
and one can leave here almost any week for the Tongas, 
the Fijis, and other islands of the South Seas. 

The Dominion of New Zealand is made up of three 
islands. As they lie on the map they form a great boot 
turned upside down with its toe toward Australia and 
with the ankle broken by Cook Strait. The foot is the 
North Island, on which are situated Auckland and Wel¬ 
lington, the two biggest cities. The South Island, which 
contains the highest mountains and some of the best 
agricultural areas, forms the leg, and Stewart Island, the 
little patch of land at the bottom, makes the loop at the 
end of the boot strap. 

The total length of the boot is one thousand miles, or 
more than the distance from New York to Chicago. At 
its broadest part it is about as wide as from New York to 
Boston. The North Island is nearly as big as Pennsyl¬ 
vania, and the South Island is larger than Illinois. Stew¬ 
art Island is about half the size of Rhode Island. It is 
mountainous, and although it supports a few sheep, it is 
chiefly a summer resort. The combined area of these 
three islands and some smaller ones adjoining is a little 
more than that of Colorado. In 1901 New Zealand an¬ 
nexed the Cook Islands, and under a mandate from the 
League of Nations it now administers former German 
Samoa. 


172 


THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND 

The New Zealand in which we are interested consists 
of the two large islands. They contain all the cities, 
almost all the people, and everything that makes the 
Dominion the live, wide-awake, prosperous country that 
it is to-day. 

The climate here is warmer than that of New England. 
It is moist and rainy. January and February are the hot¬ 
test months and July and August the coldest. On the 
North Island snow falls only on the mountains and high 
hills and is practically unknown in Wellington and Auck¬ 
land. On the South Island there is a good deal of snow 
south of Christchurch. 

A large part of the North Island is hilly and some of its 
plains are covered with pumice sand, which unfits them for 
tillage or pasturage. One part of it has hot springs and 
geysers like those of Yellowstone Park. It has several 
volcanoes, although they are mostly inactive now. Ngau- 
ruhoe, the youngest, continually sends up little clouds of 
steam. The Ruapehu volcano, which is nine thousand 
feet high, has glaciers on its upper slopes, and ends in a 
hot crater lake, which is often covered with steam. White 
Island, in the Bay of Plenty, is a vast bed of piping hot 
sulphur. On days when the sea is calm a person may land 
on its rocky shore, but walking about it is not pleasant, for 
the crusty ground breaks under his feet and the sulphur 
eats up the soles of his shoes and his clothes if it touches 
them. 

Mount Egmont, near the southwest coast of the North 
Island, reminds me much of Fuji-yama, Japan. It is a 
perfect cone, eighty-three hundred feet high, or more than 
two thousand feet higher than Mount Washington. It is 
thirty miles in diameter at the base. At its foot lies New 
*73 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Plymouth, a town of about eleven thousand people. 
Mount Egmont rises out of one of the most fertile districts 
of New Zealand. The soil is a rich loam, so good for grass 
that it has sold for four hundred dollars an acre. It is 
used for dairying, the butter being exported to Great 
Britain and the United States. 

Like the Tasmanians, the New Zealanders call their 
country the Switzerland of the Pacific, and the mountains 
of the South Island are named the Southern Alps. They 
reach a height of more than twelve thousand feet in Mount 
Cook, which the native Maoris call “Aorangi,” or the 
“cloud piercer.” The snow line is lower than in Switzer¬ 
land, and the people here say that the scenery surpasses 
that of the European Alps. Many of the New Zealand 
peaks are covered with perpetual snow, and there are great 
glaciers on both sides of the range, descending in places 
to within a few feet of sea level. Some of the peaks have 
never been climbed and many glaciers are still unnamed. 
Some of the latter are of enormous extent. The Tasman 
Glacier is eighteen miles long, two thousand feet thick, and 
in places three miles wide. It covers an area of three 
thousand acres. Both the Murchison Glacier and the 
Godley Glacier are ten miles long and each has an area of 
more than five thousand acres. 

The southwest coast of the South Island is bitten into by 
fourteen deep sounds hollowed out by the glaciers of ages 
past. The most beautiful of all is Milford Sound. It is 
surrounded by lofty cliffs and mountains about whose 
heads float wreaths of mist and down whose sides silvery 
cascades plunge into the sea. Milford Track, which the 
New Zealanders call the “most beautiful walk in the 
world,” leads from the Sound for twenty-six miles through 
174 


THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND 


forests, mountains, and valleys to Te Anau, the second 
largest lake in the Dominion. 

The largest lake is Taupo, in the centre of the North 
Island. It is surrounded by mountains capped with per¬ 
petual snow, and in flood times a magnificent waterfall 
thunders down into it from the sheer cliffs on its western 
side. 

In summer the New Zealand mountains are full of trav¬ 
ellers and explorers from all over the world. The tourist 
agents of Europe send parties and the people of the Old 
World come to this Switzerland of the South Seas just as 
We go to the Switzerland of Europe. The New Zealand 
government, which is the chief excursion bureau, has a 
department devoted to exploiting the scenery. It prints 
illustrated guide books, which it gives away or sells at cost. 
The government builds roads and bridges through the 
most picturesque parts. It maintains a series of rest 
houses along Milford Track, and operates the hot-springs 
district as a tourist resort. 

New Zealand is an evergreen land, as the leaves stay 
on most of the trees all the year round. Here is the same 
green that one sees in England and Ireland; for, like the 
mother country, the Dominion has an abundant rainfall. 
The fences about the houses are often hedges with leaves 
of a varnished green. There are many varieties of ever¬ 
green plants, such as the holly. The New Zealand palm 
lily is to be seen everywhere. It grows to a height of 
twenty feet without a branch, and then its top blossoms 
out in green tassels like a palm. The people call it the 
cabbage tree. 

And then the ferns! New Zealand has enough to estab¬ 
lish ferneries for all creation. There are acres of them, 
175 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

miles of them! Some of the deep glens and gorges are 
walled with ferns. They are of all kinds, some like great 
trees and others as fine as the maidenhair. There is one 
plant, half fern and half vine, which is used by the natives 
for bedding. This is the “supplejack,” which climbs the 
loftiest trees, coiling its wire-like stems about the branches. 
The runners are so tough that they can be used for ropes. 
They maintain their coil after being pulled from a tree, and 
are said to have been used for making spring mattresses. 
Think of sleeping on fern beds, upon fern springs, and you 
have one of the possibilities of New Zealand. 

Both the North Island and the South Island have much 
good land. I visited a farm on the Canterbury Plains in 
the South Island which a good authority tells me has pro¬ 
duced ninety bushels of wheat to the acre, and I have 
travelled through sections where thirty, forty, and fifty 
bushels are not uncommon. Some of the land produces a 
hundred bushels of oats to the acre and much of it yields 
turnips by the ton. There are millions of acres sown with 
English grasses. In northern New Zealand, swamp areas 
once considered worthless have been drained and now 
form some of the richest land in the Dominion. On the 
whole, New Zealand comes as near being a rich and beauti¬ 
ful garden as any country with a temperate climate lying 
south of the Equator. 

As for the people, they are enthusiasts about their 
country. They believe in New Zealand for the New Zea¬ 
landers. It is estimated that the Dominion could ac¬ 
commodate perhaps four times its present population of a 
million and a quarter, but I doubt whether away down 
in their souls the inhabitants really want immigration. 
Certainly the government has put no premium upon it. 

176 


THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND 


Even British subjects wishing to go out to New Zealand 
must be nominated for admission by a resident of the 
Dominion before they can get their transportation at the 
reduced rates sometimes offered. The government is 
especially anxious to keep out the Chinese, and limits the 
number admitted, each of whom has to pay a tax of five 
hundred dollars. The result is that there are now less 
than three thousand Chinese in the country, and practi¬ 
cally no Japanese. 

Of the more than a million population only forty thou¬ 
sand are Maoris or aborigines. The remainder are nearly 
all British-born subjects, more than half of whom were 
born in New Zealand. The rest have come from England, 
Scotland, or Ireland. The Dominion is in fact a little 
Britain. The houses are much like English cottages, the 
business places are like English shops, and the money is in 
pounds, shillings, and pence. The language is English and 
I sometimes hear the cockney accent of London. The 
people are, I think, far more progressive and less pro¬ 
vincial than the inhabitants of Great Britain, and they 
seem to me much more like the nephews of Uncle Sam 
than the sons of John Bull. 


177 


CHAPTER XXVI 


“ SOCIAL PESTS” 

W HILE other countries have talked about 
land reform or their peasants have staged 
revolutions to get farms of their own, 
New Zealand has quietly gone ahead and 
put through a system of land ownership and taxation 
which in the United States would be called socialistic. 

What would our people say, for example, if Congress 
should pass laws carrying out a land policy such as was 
explained to me by one of the national leaders of New 
Zealand? He said: 

“We do not look upon land as like other property. 
Land should belong to the state. It is given to it by the 
Lord, to be held in trust for the people. It is all right 
for a man to own the improvements he makes and to be 
allowed to sell them or leave them to his descendants; 
but as to the land itself I don’t think God ever intended 
any one man to own vast tracts and be able to hand on 
the property to his descendants through generation after 
generation. 

“As the trustee of the people the government has no 
more right to sell large tracts of land than it has to give 
them away. The ideal method would be for the gov¬ 
ernment to own all the land and lease it, and that is 
what we some day hope to accomplish here. As it is 
now, I think we have blasted the ambitions of those 
.78 



New Zealand has abundant water power, much of which is still un¬ 
developed. The government has selected seventy-odd sites for hydro¬ 
electric projects and has a big programme under way. 





The big land problem was getting the immense sheep blocks held by 
a few cut up into smaller areas for general farming. The government 
has the right to condemn land for closer settlement. 



New Zealand has experienced some terrible volcanic eruptions. In one 
the top of Mt. Tarawera was blown off, with an explosion heard five hun¬ 
dred miles away, and surrounding villages were buried sixty feet deep in 
mud. 






“SOCIAL PESTS” 

who dreamed of building up great estates as family 
inheritances.” 

It does not seem likely that the government will ever 
own all the land in New Zealand, but it holds enough to 
control the situation, and it stands ready to take more 
whenever it thinks it necessary. What the people are 
after is to make their country one of small farms, and they 
are opposed to large holdings by any person or corpora¬ 
tion. They call the big landowner a “social pest,” and 
have not hesitated to strip him of a part, at least, of his 
possessions. Lands taken from the big proprietors have 
been cut up and sold to settlers, whom the government 
helps and encourages quite as much as it discourages the 
owners of vast tracts. 

Indeed, the lot of the large landowner in New Zealand 
is not a happy one. His lands are at the mercy of the 
government, which can force him to sell at any time. The 
more land he owns, the higher his tax rate. If he does 
not live in New Zealand, his taxes are automatically in¬ 
creased by fifty per cent. 

The development of land policies aimed at the larger 
owners is comparatively recent, and entirely contrary to 
the theories of the men who established the first colonies 
here. The story of how the system came to be changed, 
as I have learned it in talking with some of the highest 
officials in the Dominion, is most interesting. It all goes 
back to the very beginnings of the country. 

Before the year 1840 considerable effort had been 
made to induce the British government to colonize the 
islands of New Zealand. But the imperial authorities 
were always busy with other things and, besides, they 
pointed to Australia, a whole continent with plenty of 
179 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

room for British settlers. The leaders of the coloniza¬ 
tion movement replied that Australia was for many 
reasons unsuited to their purposes. They wanted to 
establish a colony of British farmers with ideals and 
conditions like those of old England. The climate of 
Australia, they said, was unfavourable to this scheme, 
there was little place for English farming methods there, 
and finally, they thought the convicts sent to Australia 
made it an undesirable country for their plans. 

At last they organized a colonizing corporation called 
the New Zealand Company. The plan was to set up 
landlords in the new country, with tenant farmers to work 
their estates. Members of old British county families 
with sufficient capital were invited to join and they, in 
turn, induced sons of the family tenants to go out with 
them. A system of grazing “runs,” as they were called, 
soon sprang up and were found to pay well, for large 
numbers of sheep and cattle could be pastured on the 
grass lands all the year round at small expense. Much of 
the land was bought at very low prices by men who never 
went to New Zealand. One man, for instance, paid two 
dollars and a half an acre for fifty thousand acres now 
worth one hundred dollars an acre. Others purchased 
tracts of twenty thousand, fifty thousand, or even two 
hundred thousand acres. 

For the most part these great holdings lay idle, while 
their absentee owners waited for the land to increase in 
value. Sometimes they used their vast acreage for graz¬ 
ing sheep, having perhaps a dozen shepherds on a prin¬ 
cipality that should have supported several thousand 
farmers. There was a sort of craze for big farms, and 
individuals and groups took up all the lands they could 
180 


“SOCIAL PESTS* 


get. The unfederated states of the New Zealand of that 
day had no common policies, and sold off their lands 
indiscriminately to any who would buy them, in order to 
raise money to build railroads or meet other expenses. 

Often lands were held by English syndicates, whose 
managers squeezed the tenants in every possible way to 
increase dividends. It was stated in the New Zealand 
Parliament that the manager of one of these absentee 
land companies had made a speech to his directors in Lon¬ 
don, apologizing because he could declare a dividend and 
bonus of only fifteen per cent, at that time, and saying 
that the shareholders must not look for bigger profits 
until wages in New Zealand were reduced. The tenants 
were charged such high rents that there was no money in 
farming. The small holdings were mortgaged so that 
the farm owner paid as much interest as the tenants did 
rent, and most of the money from both was going to 
England. 

Feeble efforts to tax the big farms out of existence did 
not prove successful. The landholders could pay high 
taxes and still make fine profits on their huge sheep and 
cattle pastures. They held tight to their acres, New 
Zealand lost favour with intending settlers, and even those 
who had come in began to sell out and leave the country, 
moving across to New South Wales and Victoria. 

Such were the conditions that faced New Zealand's 
greatest premier, Richard Seddon, or “ King Dick," when 
he came into power. Richard Seddon was a man of the 
people. Born in England, the son of a Lancashire farmer,, 
he learned the trade of an engineer, and when, as a boy, he 
first came to Australia, he worked in the railroad shops. 
Later he went to the goldfields at Bendigo, and there 
181 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

swung a pick in the mines. Throughout the rest of his 
life some of his friends called him "Digger Dick.” After 
three years he came to New Zealand to try his luck in 
the goldfields of the west coast. It was there he first 
engaged in politics. He was elected mayor of his town 
and in 1879 was sent to the New Zealand Parliament, 
in which he held a seat until his death twenty-seven years 
later. For thirteen years of that time he was leader of 
Parliament, and therefore the prime minister of the 
country. 

Seddon was a great, deep-chested, hearty sort of a man, 
with a jovial manner, a jolly laugh, an amazing memory 
for faces, and a gift for handling people, especially those 
of the class from which he came. He had tremendous 
force and driving power, and while he was in office he put 
through a great many laws in the interest of the working 
man. 

One of the first big questions he tackled was the land 
problem, which he felt was responsible for the hard times 
from which New Zealand was then suffering. His solu¬ 
tion was a new land law, which provided chiefly that the 
government should have the right to buy any lands in the 
Dominion for the purpose of re-dividing them for sale to 
settlers. In case an owner refused to sell, or held out for 
an exorbitant price, the government could condemn the 
lands and take them over at a fair price. Under this 
law, which is still in force, the Minister of Lands may at 
any time notify a proprietor in writing that his land or a 
portion thereof is required for purposes of settlement. 
Within six months the owner must tell the Minister 
whether he will enter into an agreement with the govern¬ 
ment for its subdivision and disposal, or whether it shall 
182 



The government conducts four big experiment farms and in the labora¬ 
tories at Wellington tests seeds and fertilizers for the farmers. This is a 
crop of rust-resisting oats on a government farm. 










Believing that the future of the country depends chiefly on agriculture, 
the New Zealand government offers every inducement to settlers to take 
up unimproved land and clear it for cultivation. 







“SOCIAL PESTS” 

be taken compulsorily under the Land for Settlements 
Act. 

In talking with officials as to just how this law worked, 
I asked them to give me a typical case. Here is the story 
of what happened when the government took over the 
bulk of an estate of more than eighty thousand acres. 
The tract belonged to a man who had bought a large 
part of it more than half a century before, paying about 
one dollar an acre. Much of it was rich farm land, but 
it was being used mostly for sheep raising. For tax pur¬ 
poses, the land had been valued at a million and a half, 
which the owner claimed was two hundred thousand dol¬ 
lars too high. When the authorities wanted to buy his 
land for settlers, he refused to sell an acre, and the gov¬ 
ernment thereupon took possession. 

The question of the value of the property was referred 
to the Court of Assessment. The owner was finally 
allowed to retain the homestead and a reasonable amount 
of the land adjoining, and the government was empowered 
to take the rest, paying the owner the amount of the 
assessed valuation. The land officials then resurveyed the 
estate and divided it into farms of three hundred and 
twenty acres or less. They laid out a town site and three 
village sites and built a railroad across the property. 
They spent about three hundred thousand dollars in 
developing the tract before opening it up to settlers. 

The lands were rapidly taken on the usual government 
terms, and at the end of six years, instead of being a big 
sheep run, the estate was made up of productive small 
farms. Land formerly used for grazing was yielding 
forty-five bushels of wheat to the acre and there were 
eleven thousand acres of it in English grass. Under in- 
183 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

tensive cultivation more wool and mutton were being 
shipped from the estate than when it was all devoted to 
sheep. In the neighbourhood of fifty thousand sheep 
and lambs were exported from it annually. When the 
government took that estate the employees upon it num¬ 
bered something like a score. Under the new arrange¬ 
ment the same area supported more than twelve hundred 
people and was spotted with pretty farm homes and school 
houses. 

Within twenty years after Seddon came into power 
the number of farms in New Zealand had doubled and the 
population had grown from six hundred and thirty-four 
thousand to more than a million. As Seddon once said, 
"land formerly used to raise only sheep was turned to 
raising men.” 

Though the government had arbitrary power to take 
almost any lands it wanted, the number of forced sales 
was not very large. The presence of the law on the 
statute books and the realization that the government 
meant business resulted in offers of great tracts of 
land for sale. Almost every year nearly twice as 
much land was offered to the government as it was 
prepared to buy, and it was thus able to pick and choose 
such lands as were best suited by location and quality 
for settlement. Usually, also, there were more applicants 
for land than there were farms available for sale, so that 
the government was in position to award the lands to those 
who seemed most likely to make successful farmers. 

Under the present laws an applicant may take up land 
with the right to purchase on a renewable lease. He must 
be at least seventeen years of age, and must want the land 
solely for his own use. Including the land for which he 
184 


“SOCIAL PESTS” 


makes application, he must not own anywhere in New 
Zealand more than five thousand acres. For allotment 
purposes, every acre of first-class land is counted as seven 
and a half acres; every acre of second-class land as two 
and a half acres, and every acre of third-class land as 
one acre. No applicant is allotted more land than the 
officials think he can properly care for, and all prospective 
settlers must pass an examination as to their qualifications. 
Veterans of the World War are allowed to acquire land 
on especially easy terms, and more than eight thousand 
former New Zealand soldiers took up farms within five 
years after the troops returned home. 

The government still has about 4,500,000 acres of which 
about 400,000 acres are suitable for settlers. Most of the 
remainder is rough land, not available for farming. About 
150,000 acres are disposed of each year, and the land 
department reports a profit of more than $250,000 a year 
on its operations. It has loaned more than $100,000,000 
to 50,000 settlers, and about half of this sum has been 
paid back. In the meantime, the area under active culti¬ 
vation has enormously increased. Out of a total of 
48,000,000 acres in New Zealand suitable for farms and 
pasturage all but 5,000,000 acres are now occupied, and 
more than 17,000,000 acres have been seeded, either 
with crops or for pasture. 


185 


CHAPTER XXVII 


THE WOMEN OF THE DOMINION 


N EW ZEALAND was the first country in the 
world to give women the vote. At first they 
were not eligible for election to Parliament, 
but later this bar was removed. New Zealand 
claims also that she had the first woman mayor. This 
was a Mrs. Yates, of Onehunga, a small town near Auck¬ 
land. On the death of her husband, who had been the 
mayor, she was elected to fill his place, and I understand 
she handled her job very well. 

The New Zealand women got the vote as far back as 
1893, and that without any militant tactics. Few of 
them seemed interested in woman suffrage, yet since 
getting it they have gone to the polls in almost as great 
numbers as the men. One reason for this is a law making 
it compulsory for people to vote or lose their privilege. 
The names of the legal voters in each district are enrolled 
before every election. Any person who does not appear 
at the polls must give a good reason for his absence, or else 
when the next roll is prepared his name will be struck 
from the list. 

There is no women’s party in New Zealand, and it is 
often said that the women’s vote has not had a distinct 
influence except in matters of infant welfare, maternity 
care, and the regulation of the liquor traffic. I put the 
question to a New Zealand woman, asking her: 

186 


THE WOMEN OF THE DOMINION 

“What has woman suffrage done for New Zealand? ” 

“ I will tell you one thing it has done/' she quickly re¬ 
plied. “It has closed twenty-five per cent, of all the 
saloons for good and it has closed all of them after six 
o'clock in the evening. In some parts of New Zealand 
there is absolute prohibition by local option. One town 
I have especially in mind was noted for its drunkenness 
and disorder. It is now one of the quietest and most re¬ 
spectable of communities. It has cut down its police 
force, and for want of other use its jail has been made the 
headquarters of the Salvation Army." 

Prohibition is a live issue in New Zealand, and some of 
the people believe the country will yet go bone dry. To 
get a license to sell liquor a man must show that he pro¬ 
vides also food and lodging, so that all the saloon-keepers 
here really run hotels. Liquor may be sold only between 
the hours of seven in the morning and six in the evening, 
and one does not see drunken men staggering home at all 
times of night. 

It used to be that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred 
women served the liquor at the hotels. The prettier the bar¬ 
maid the greater was her custom and the higher were her 
wages. But this has been changed by a law forbidding the 
renewal of barmaids’ licenses. Nowadays, if one does 
come across a woman behind the bar in a public house, she 
is far from being the pretty, captivating barmaid of ro¬ 
mance. More than likely she is the elderly widow of a 
hotel-keeper unable to support herself in any other line of 
business and so allowed to continue in this one during her 
lifetime. 

So far not as many girls in New Zealand go out to work 
for their living as with us. Before the World War few 
187 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

daughters of well-to-do homes thought of such a thing. 
But when the Dominion sent forty-one per cent, of her men 
to the front, their places had to some extent to be taken 
by girls and women. Even the banks, which are most 
conservative, opened their doors to girl clerks. Some of 
the women workers, having had a taste of independence, 
like to work, and there is growing up a class like our 
woman stenographers, bank clerks, and journalists. Many 
of the young women have taken up nursing, getting their 
training in the hospitals, which are all operated by the 
government or under government supervision. Those 
who were sent to Europe during the World War were 
nurses of at least ten years' hospital experience and they 
stood exceptionally high among the army nursing corps 
of the Allies. 

The working women of New Zealand are, like the men, 
well protected by law as to their hours, wages, and condi¬ 
tions of employment. The government Department of 
Labour is watchful of their interests and welfare, and has 
woman inspectors who visit the factories and other places 
of business where women and girls are employed to see 
that the laws are obeyed. By defining a factory as “any 
building, office, or place in which two or more persons are 
employed directly or indirectly in any handicraft," the 
New Zealand government brings even the smallest es¬ 
tablishments under the law, and thus protects women 
from sweatshop conditions. In offices and stores their 
hours of labour are fixed at forty-eight a week with an al¬ 
lowed overtime of not more than one hundred and twenty 
hours in a year, or three hours in any one day. In most 
of the manufacturing industries women work forty-four 
hours a week. The law requires that they shall be paid 
188 


THE WOMEN OF THE DOMINION 

for overtime at the rate of time and a half. Minimum 
wages are fixed by law in practically all trades in which 
women are employed, including work in the stores. These 
minimum rates vary with the particular nature of the 
work and the worker's skill and experience. 

The law also forbids the employment of any girls under 
fifteen years of age, and those under eighteen are not per¬ 
mitted to work for wages unless they have passed through 
the fourth standard, or grade, of the public schools. It 
is illegal to employ girls or “learners” in any trade 
without paying them wages while learning. In the past, 
some factories were found to be taking on inexperienced 
girls and paying them nothing, telling them that their 
services were not worth wages at the start, but that they 
would be paid as soon as they were “experienced.” At 
the end of a few weeks or months these employers would 
often dismiss the girls, saying they had not made good, 
and then bring in a fresh lot on the same terms. Em¬ 
ployers are required to provide sanitary, well lighted 
and ventilated workrooms equipped with fire escapes. 

These labour laws are by no means dead letters. Em¬ 
ployers are fined for every transgression of them. I have 
just been looking over a list of cases illustrating this fact. 
One man who cut short the dinner hour of his girls paid 
ten dollars and costs, and another, a restaurant owner, 
who kept his waitresses at work for eleven and a half 
hours in one day, had to pay a fine of thirty-six dollars, al¬ 
though one of the girls had had three afternoons off that 
week. Another restaurant man was fined seven and a 
half dollars and costs for employing his waitresses fifty- 
two hours a week, and a third was fined for not allowing 
one of his woman workers an hour for her meals. In the 
189 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

town of Napier a storekeeper employing women for more 
than forty-eight hours in each of two succeeding weeks was 
fined forty dollars. The government inspectors learned of 
a baker who kept his two daughters working all night. 
They arrested him and fined him five dollars for each girl, 
warning him that on the next offence the fine would be 
fifty dollars. The saleswomen in stores must have seats 
and must be allowed to use them. I have before me re¬ 
ports of cases of merchants who were fined for not fur¬ 
nishing such seats. 

The government also protects women from being worked 
at hours that will necessitate their going home late at 
night. One labour inspector reported that he found a 
factory in which a set of girls were put on from eight to ten 
in the morning and then taken off until one. They were 
worked from one until five, and again from seven to 
nine, making altogether eight hours. Another lot of girls 
worked from ten until twelve, from three until seven, and 
from nine until eleven. This arrangement did not require 
more than the legal time, but the officials thought it was 
bad for the girls to have to go home so late at night, and 
not have their regular time for rest. 

The working day of hotel helpers, many of whom are 
women, is defined by law, and meals cannot be served out¬ 
side the regular hours. If dinner is limited to the hours be¬ 
tween six and eight, the traveller arriving at a hotel at 
eight-fifteen cannot get anything to eat until breakfast, no 
matter how hungry he may be. Even a world-famous 
prima donna found she could not get dinner at an unusual 
hour at her hotel in Wellington. She was accustomed to 
postponing her dinner until after her concerts, and asked to 
have it served at eleven o’clock. But the hotel manager 
190 



The Maoris do not make good servants but prefer to lead their own 
easy-going lives. This belle’s robe is handwoven from New Zealand flax. 
She wears also the greenstone charm without which no native woman is 
fully dressed. 






The town of Nelson has the reputation of having “the prettiest girls 
in the country,” and “seven women to one man.” Some of its surplus 
women find work in the hop fields. 









THE WOMEN OF THE DOMINION 

refused. It would have meant keeping several servants 
after hours and paying them overtime, and he was un¬ 
willing to do so. 

The women working in factories are not so well organized 
as the men, and even where they do the same work they 
do not, as a rule, get as much pay. Most of the women in 
the manufacturing industries are in the clothing, hat¬ 
making, tailoring, printing, and shoe-making trades. 

In New Zealand there is no real servant class, such as our 
immigrant girls from Europe. The native Maoris do not 
make good house workers and most of the Chinese are in 
business for themselves, running laundries, fruit shops, 
and market gardens, though some of them are employed 
as cooks. The people who first came here from the British 
Isles were not of the lower classes. New Zealand was 
never a penal colony and men came voluntarily, seeking 
better opportunities than those they had found in the old 
country. Some came for their health, some followed the 
gold rush in the middle of the last century, and some were 
remittance men, members of the finest of the old British 
families. Moreover, many of the settlers acquired lands 
of their own, and the children of independent landholders 
do not care to go out as domestic servants. Therefore, 
domestic workers are scarce, and in the average New 
Zealand household the whole family shares in the work of 
the home. Every child has his duties, and, I may add, is 
generally paid for performing them. Nearly every ten- 
year-old has a savings account which grows with the money 
earned at home. 

In the country it is almost impossible to get servants, 
and in the towns the young women prefer to work in the 
factories, notwithstanding the fact that when the matter 
191 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

of board is taken into consideration, wages there are 
often less than those of house servants. 

When a family does secure a servant girl she frequently 
rules the household, besides fixing her own wages and hours 
off. She usually demands one half holiday every week, 
every Sunday afternoon, and the whole day free every 
other Sunday. 

The New Zealand government has not overlooked the 
servant girl. The working man's premier, Sir Richard 
Seddon, found that the employment agencies were 
cheating young women who came to them to get work, 
and that they often sent girls to improper places. So 
he started free public employment offices for domestic 
workers, which are still carried on. 

In the report of a woman supervisor of these offices I 
find some interesting comments on how servants should be 
treated to make them efficient. She advises mothers to 
make domestic duties more attractive to their daughters, 
and to work with and teach them. To mistresses she 
says: 

“A mistress who has but one servant should work with 
her during the morning hours. Under such circumstances 
a girl will become very proficient, and the domestic ma¬ 
chinery will move along on oiled bearings. The mistress 
who does nothing to help her servant and is always hurry¬ 
ing her wears the girl out. It is she who brings domestic 
service into bad repute, and she who is driving the girls into 
the factories. 

“Servants are becoming scarcer every year. Even the 
old women who used to be a trouble to the office have found 
employment, nearly all of them in the country. Some girls 
engage places and then do not go to them. Perhaps they 
192 


THE WOMEN OF THE DOMINION 


find something better in the meantime and break their 
engagements. I would suggest that the government pro¬ 
vide fines for such offences, as they cause great inconveni¬ 
ence. If an employer fails to take a girl after engaging 
her, the servant is entitled to a week’s pay, so it seems only 
fair that a girl be penalized if she fails to report when she 
has accepted a place.” 

Just here I want to say a word about the pretty girls 
of New Zealand. These islands are full of them. The 
climate gives them the rosiest of cheeks, and they look 
much like the women of England, Scotland, and Ireland. 
In manners and dress they will compare favourably with 
those of the United States or Europe. They read the 
papers and are able to discuss the political issues of the 
hour with each other and with the men. 

The women here do not go in for club life quite as much 
as do our women in the States. I think one reason for 
that is the fact that the population is more scattered 
through the country on farms than gathered together in 
towns. Another reason may be the fact that the New 
Zealanders take a great interest in games, and the girls 
and boys and men and women join in tennis, golf, swim¬ 
ming, and other outdoor sports. 


193 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


A COUNTRY WITHOUT A POORHOUSE 

H OW would you like to be sure of a pension from 
Uncle Sam in your old age? How would you 
like to know that if your income after sixty-five 
years of age was less than three hundred and 
ninety dollars a year, you would get from the govern¬ 
ment at Washington at least enough money to keep you 
alive? 

That is the situation here in New Zealand. Every 
citizen is assured that if old age finds him without sufficient 
money to live on, the government will provide up to a 
maximum sum of one hundred and ninety-five dollars a 
year. To widows with children larger pensions are paid. 

New Zealand has had an old-age pension law for more 
than a quarter of a century, and everyone now seems to 
think it is a fine thing. Certainly there are no poorhouses 
here, as we know them, and the old-woman beggar is con¬ 
spicuously absent. 

According to New Zealanders, their country was the 
first in the world to pass a non-contributory old-age pension 
law. In fact, I find New Zealand claims to hold twelve 
“Firsts” in social legislation. After listening to the 
enthusiastic talk of the people, I have been surprised at 
what their country, situated in what we think of as the 
most remote corner of the globe, has to show. According 
to my notes, New Zealand was the first country to: 

194 


A COUNTRY WITHOUT A POORHOUSE 

Provide non-contributory old-age pensions; 

Introduce conciliation and arbitration of industrial 
disputes; 

Establish universal penny postage; 

Start government grading of butter, cheese, and hemp 
for export ; 

Go into the state insurance business; 

Set up state maternity homes; 

Open a government tourist department; 

Give women parliamentary suffrage; 

Operate state coal mines; 

Organize a state department of public health; 

Enact minimum wage laws for women and minors; 

Build houses and sell them to workmen. 

All these “firsts,” and the fact that she has the lowest 
death rate in the world, back up New Zealand's claim of 
being the “Newest England” and a “Brighter Britain.” 

The old-age pension law was one of the many acts for the 
benefit of the common people put through by Seddon dur¬ 
ing his long term as premier. He introduced the bill and 
fought it through to passage in the face of considerable 
opposition. He took the position that pensions from 
the state were not a matter of kindness or charity to those 
past the ability to work, but only their rightful due. 

The law is so worded that pensioners need feel no 
humiliation in accepting state funds. Its introduction 
states that: 

“It is just and right that every person who has for a 
number of years assisted by his (or her) work in the devel¬ 
opment of the country, and has also by payment of taxes 
contributed to its good government, should be protected 
against want in his (or her) old age.” 

195 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 


The law provides that the pensioner must have been a 
resident of New Zealand for twenty-five years prior to his 
application; that he must not during that time have been 
imprisoned for five years for any offence, and that he must 
not during the twelve years preceding his application have 
been in jail four months or on four occasions for an offence 
punishable by one year’s imprisonment. The applicant 
must not during the past twelve years have deserted his 
wife and children and must have lived a sober and repu¬ 
table life in the year preceding his application. All ap¬ 
plications are made at the post offices, where such as pass 
the examinations are given certificates, each entitling its 
owner to a pension for one year. The certificates have to 
be renewed every year. 

Since the first pension law was enacted, the amount of 
the annual allowance has been several times increased. 
Already the government has paid out more than forty-five 
million dollars in doles to the aged, and there are, I am 
told, about twenty thousand people now receiving these 
pensions. This is considerably more than one pensioner 
to every hundred persons in the country. 

If the United States had a similar law, with the same 
proportion of pensioners, we should have 7000 of them 
in Washington, almost 90,000 in New York, 40,000 in 
Chicago, 28,000 in Philadelphia, and a thousand or more in 
each of a score of other cities. In the whole country we 
should have a million and a half pensioners, and if each 
received $180 a year, the amount of the average pension in 
New Zealand, the total distribution of money among our 
old people would amount to more than $ 288,000,000. As 
a matter of fact, this sum would be only about $30,000,000 
more than our government now pays out each year in 
196 


A COUNTRY WITHOUT A POORHOUSE 

pensions for old soldiers and their dependents, not in¬ 
cluding the payments to veterans of the World War. 

One of Wellington’s big buildings is the government 
life-insurance office. Here you may find out just how 
much the body politic is willing to bet on the chances 
of life and death of its people. The government has been 
in the life-insurance business for fifty years, but it 
has never forbidden the private companies to operate, 
and competes with them right along. Indeed, it is said 
that the latter are getting most of the new business be¬ 
cause they put more life and energy into selling insurance 
than the state institution does. The government life in¬ 
surance company uses the postmasters as its agents, and 
thus has offices at every crossroads. It requires as strict a 
physical examination as any private company, but its rates 
are low and the insured feel certain of their money. There 
are now some sixty thousand state policies in force repre¬ 
senting an insurance of about eighty-five million dollars. 

The state insurance business is managed like our private 
life-insurance companies and upon similar calculations of 
the chances of life and death. It sells some policies on the 
paid-up system and has also a savings-fund plan. Special 
rates are granted to those who abstain from intoxicating 
liquors, and another form of policy provides annuities for 
government clerks after they are sixty years of age. 
Fire and accident policies are also written in competition 
with the commercial companies. 

One reason the government went into the business was 
the fact that the companies operating in New Zealand at 
that time were charging rates as high as those in the 
United States, England, and other countries, where the 
“expectancy of life” is not so great as it is here. The 
197 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

New Zealanders are wonderfully healthy. They live, on 
the average, eight years longer than we do. It may be 
that their lives are lengthened by the amount of protection 
and security they have from their various government 
enterprises. Moreover, the country is not over-populated, 
there is no competition with coloured or cheap foreign 
labour, a living wage is guaranteed to all, farms may still 
be had on comparatively easy terms, there is little poverty 
throughout the Dominion, and the general level of comfort 
is high. The average wealth for all persons over twenty 
years of age has been estimated at four thousand dollars, 
and that notwithstanding the fact that there are few 
millionaires in New Zealand and not many persons who 
are rich according to our standards. 

The per-capita deposits in New Zealand banks are stead¬ 
ily increasing, showing that the country is accumulating 
wealth. In 1890 the average was just under one hundred 
dollars for every one of the population; twenty years later 
it had risen to a little more than one hundred and twenty- 
five, and the latest figure is two hundred dollars. The 
present assets of the six principal banks total more than 
three hundred and forty millions of dollars, and their lia¬ 
bilities come to less than three hundred millions. 

The postal savings banks are banks of deposit, paying 
interest of from 3J to 4 per cent, on all accounts. At 
present the deposits approximate a total of $ 220,000,000 
held by about 680,000 depositors. This equals one savings 
account to every 1.8 persons of the population. Deposits 
as low as one shilling, or twenty-five cents are taken, but no 
interest is paid on any sum below $5 or above $25,000. 
On sums up to $2500 the rate is 4 per cent.; on larger 
amounts it is 3J per cent. 


198 



On the beautiful curved shore of Hawke Bay, protected from the ocean 
by a breakwater, is Napier, the chief shipping point of a large meat- and 
wool-producing district. 
















In the Mt. Cook Range of the Southern Alps are ten peaks more than 
ten thousand feet high. The great Tasman Glacier provides thrills for the 
most expert mountain climber. 









A COUNTRY WITHOUT A POORHOUSE 


New Zealand has its building and loan associations, 
though not to the same extent as the United States. The 
farmers have also organized all sorts of cooperative associa¬ 
tions. The stock of the New Zealand Loan and Mercan¬ 
tile Company, a big firm which buys up produce and ships 
it abroad, is owned chiefly by the New Zealand growers 
from whom it buys. I have visited a big store, the stock 
of which is held by its customers. It has a large capital, 
and its manager told me that it paid ten per cent, dividends. 
It is much like one of our department stores, with the 
prices marked on all articles offered for sale. Many of 
the meat-freezing establishments are managed by stock 
companies, in which the sheep and cattle owners are in¬ 
terested, and most of them pay good dividends. 

There is a National Provident Fund, which any one be- 
tweentheages of sixteenand fifty may join, provided that his 
income during the three years prior to joining has not been 
more than fifteen hundred dollars. No medical examina¬ 
tion is required. A contributor to the Fund is protected 
in case of incapacity to work, his children and widow re¬ 
ceive an allowance upon his death, and on reaching the 
age of sixty he receives for the rest of his life a pension of 
from two dollars and a half to ten dollars a week, according 
to the scale of his contributions. Married women con¬ 
tributing to the Fund get a bonus of thirty dollars on the 
birth of each child. The applicant joins by filling in a 
form at a postal money-order office or local office of the 
Fund and paying his first weekly contribution. Although 
the Fund is only about ten years old, it has nearly twenty- 
two thousand contributors. 

Another institution in which New Zealand takes especial 
pride is the office of the Public Trust, the first institution 
199 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

of its kind in the world. Through this the government 
acts after the fashion of our commercial trust companies. 
A public trustee is appointed for the whole country and he 
has under him a staff of lawyers of high reputation. Sup¬ 
pose a man dies intestate; the Public Trust administers his 
estate. If you want to make your will, the Public Trust 
will draw it for you and you may make the Trust your 
executor. Suppose you have been acting as trustee to an 
estate and wish to lay aside your responsibility; the Public 
Trust will take it over. If an insane person has no guar¬ 
dian, the Public Trust will look after his affairs. Unless 
expressly directed otherwise, all money coming into the 
office goes into a common fund. This is invested by the 
public trustee in first-class securities for the benefit of the 
estates in his charge. 

The Public Trust now handles estates and funds to the 
value of more than one hundred and twenty-five million 
dollars, and the amount is growing every year. More than 
thirty thousand wills are on deposit in the office, an evi¬ 
dence of the increasing public confidence in the institution. 
Although it was established to give the people service at 
low rates and not to make money, and though its fees 
are never above three per cent, the office has been so well 
managed that it not only pays for itself, but yields a profit 
of more than fifty thousand dollars a year. While it is a 
government institution, the Public Trust provides its own 
buildings and pays taxes and postage just as if it were a 
commercial enterprise. Its employees are under the civil 
service and hold office during good behaviour. 

Practically every New Zealand post office is a telegraph 
office, a telephone office, a savings bank, a government life- 
insurance and pension agency, and a money-order office, 
200 


A COUNTRY WITHOUT A POORHOUSE 


so you see postman and postmaster have plenty to do. 
There are now government telephones almost everywhere, 
although they are not so numerous in proportion to the 
population as they are in the United States. Telephones 
are still considered somewhat in the class of luxuries. In 
the hotels, for example, one rarely sees a telephone in 
every room, but there will be an instrument in the hall on 
each floor. 

But there is another side to the picture of New Zea¬ 
land’s government activities. A man is worth not what 
he makes, but what he has left when his debts are paid. It 
is the same with a nation, and New Zealand has rapidly 
rolled up a huge public debt. At the end of the century 
it owed about two hundred and twenty million dollars, or 
more than three hundred dollars per head, or fifteen hun¬ 
dred dollars per family of five. This debt kept on growing, 
and then was more than doubled by expenditures in the 
World War, which were a tremendous burden to a small 
country like New Zealand. 

Suppose the same conditions to prevail in the United 
States with its one hundred and five million inhabitants. 
Instead of the twenty-two billions we now owe, we should 
owe more than eighty-seven billion dollars, or almost ex¬ 
actly four times the sum that we and our children, and our 
children’s children for generations to come, must be heav¬ 
ily taxed to pay. 

On the other hand, it must be remembered that nearly 
half the total debt of New Zealand is invested in railroads, 
telephones, telegraphs, hydro-electric systems, farm land, 
and loans to settlers. These investments pay interest, and 
are represented by assets of much greater value than the 
amount of borrowed money spent upon them. 

201 


CHAPTER XXIX 


WHERE THE WORKING MAN RULES 

1 HAD lost myself in Auckland. I had been visiting 
our American consul in one of the suburbs under 
the shadow of Mount Eden and had started back on 
foot when I met a rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed, healthy- 
looking young man and asked him to direct me to my 
hotel. 

"I am going that way,” said he, “and if you will walk 
with me I will show you.” So we went along together. 
“How are times here?” said 1 . 

“Very good,” was the reply. “We all have plenty of 
work and we get enough to keep us from starving.” 
“What is your business?” I asked. 

“I am a carpenter. I have a job building workmen's 
houses for the government, and I get sixteen shillings and 
tenpence ($3.75) a day.” 

“What hours do you work?” 

“Oh!” with a laugh, “my hours are not bad. I work 
only forty-four hours a week and have a half holiday 
Saturdays.” 

“But how about wages on Saturday?” 

“The wages are just the same as for the other days. I 
suppose I should say I get one hundred and one shillings 
per week instead of fifteen shillings and tenpence a 
day.” 

This conversation gives you some idea of work and 


202 


WHERE THE WORKING MAN RULES 

wages in New Zealand. Though there is some variation 
among the different industries, forty-four hours is the usual 
working week of the labouring man, and every one has his 
weekly half holiday. For any work beyond the standard 
number of hours in a day or week the men usually get 
paid time and a half or even double time. 

My carpenter friend is typical of the New Zealand 
worker, who is a well-paid, well-housed, and well-fed in¬ 
dividual. I noticed in Wellington, as here in Auckland, a 
general air of well-being and prosperity. The people are 
polite and friendly and do not seem inclined to take things 
in too much of a hurry. They are proud of their town, as 
I think they have a right to be. 

Auckland is the largest city in the Dominion and is 
about the size of New Haven, Connecticut. Its spacious 
inner harbour, which has five and a half miles of smooth 
deep water, is thirty miles from the open sea. There are 
nine wharves, swarming with business, but they are not 
sufficient for the fast-growing port, one of the trade centres 
of the South Pacific. The annual imports and exports 
come to more than a hundred million dollars and the 
figure is growing rapidly. 

The city is built up and down hill. Even Queen Street, 
the chief retail business thoroughfare, is not entirely level. 
All the tram cars start from the foot of this street, serving 
not only Auckland itself but suburban towns within a 
radius of eight miles. The lines are owned by the city, 
and every one is divided into fare zones of two cents each. 
Taxicabs are very expensive here, for New Zealand has to 
pay around a dollar a gallon for gasoline, which is im¬ 
ported from the United States. 

Here, as elsewhere in the Dominion, the working men are 
203 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

the lords and their unions have dictated many of the laws. 
The famous conciliation and arbitration acts not only 
recognize unions of workers and unions of employers, but 
encourage their organization. It is provided that a work¬ 
men's union may be composed of fifteen members and 
any such union may come under the law by registering it¬ 
self with the Department of Labour. Three or more em¬ 
ployers may form a union and register. The Conciliation 
and Arbitration Act was supposed to provide for the peace¬ 
ful settlement of all disputes between employers and em¬ 
ployed. From 1894, when the first act was passed, until 
1905, New Zealand had no strikes. Although this legis¬ 
lation has not entirely prevented strikes in the last twenty 
years, it has undoubtedly reduced their frequency and 
severity. 

New Zealand is divided into eight industrial districts, 
each of which has its Council of Conciliation. If there is 
a dispute, complaint may be made to a council by 
either party. The council sends for persons and papers, 
and after examination gives a judgment, which is filed as 
an industrial agreement. 

If either party to the dispute is not satisfied, however, 
an appeal can be made from a council to the Court of 
Arbitration of the Dominion. This consists of three mem¬ 
bers, one of whom is a judge of the Supreme Court. One 
of the others is nominated by the national association of 
employers, and the third is named by the trades unions. 
This court gives the case a rehearing, and its judgment is 
final. It can fix wages and working hours, and it can im¬ 
pose fines. It may assess damages upon the parties to 
the suit, and all the property of the loser can be taken to 
satisfy such claims. If the judgment is against a trades 
204 


WHERE THE WORKING MAN RULES 

union or an industrial association without property, the 
individual members of the organization are liable. 

The unions do not have to register, and a registered 
union may, after due notice, withdraw its registration, but 
so long as it is registered it must abide by the decisions of 
the Court of Arbitration. Failing to do so, it may have 
its charter taken away from it. The advantage of regis¬ 
tration to the unions is that only a registered union can 
have an employer brought before either a council or the 
Court. 

Whether registered or not, the employer must appear. 
An employer or worker bound by an award or an industrial 
agreement who takes part in a strike or lockout in the in¬ 
dustry affected is subject to heavy fine. Unless fourteen 
days’ notice has been given, a strike or lockout in a public 
utility or an industry dealing in the necessities of life is 
considered a statutory offence, even when the party in 
fault is not bound by an award. A strike in the milk 
business or on a railroad or street-car line would fall under 
this provision. 

I have before me the official reports of a number of in¬ 
dustrial cases. Here is one that came before the Council 
of Conciliation in Dunedin at the instance of the Dunedin 
Painters’ Union. The Council decided that the painters 
should work from eight o’clock until five on five days of the 
week, and from eight until twelve on Saturday, one hour 
being allowed each day, except Saturday, for dinner. The 
decision fixed the number of apprentices, and it provided 
that employers should hire members of the union in pref¬ 
erence to non-union painters. 

In the case of the Bakers’ Union of Christchurch the 
Court of Arbitration decided that overtime must be paid at 
205 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

the rate of time and a quarter for the first four hours and 
at the rate of time and a half for every hour thereafter. 
The decision limited each journeyman to but one appren¬ 
tice, and fixed the term of apprenticeship to four years. 
It provided that no carter could be employed in a bake¬ 
house, but that a baker might send out his employees to 
deliver bread, provided they were not required to work 
overtime. 

Decisions of the councils and the Court may establish 
the rate of wages not only for the parties to the dispute, 
but for others in the same industry, although local and 
trade conditions are always taken into consideration. For 
instance, if the Court fixes the wages of the bookbinders in 
one district at so much a month the bookbinders in other 
districts will at once demand the same and most likely get 
it. Not all the cases are decided in favour of the unions, 
however. In determining fair rates, the Court of Arbitra¬ 
tion has tried to find out the minimum on which a worker 
can live in decent comfort and also what wages each em¬ 
ployer can give and still make a profit. Awards run for 
three years, when a revision may be asked. At the expira¬ 
tion of the first three-year period after the arbitration law 
went into effect the unions entered the Court with new de¬ 
mands for higher wages, but in many cases the increases 
were denied. 

To an American, the Dominion laws fixing hours and 
wages and regulating relations between workmen and 
employers seem radical, but the New Zealanders do not 
think them so. They claim that as a people they are, 
like their British ancestors, naturally conservative. 
Their government, they say, has been compelled by force 
of circumstances to go into all sorts of things, and reforms 
206 



The Christmas holidays come in New Zealand’s summer, and roses and 
sweet peas take the place of holly and mistletoe. Nevertheless, the people 
stick to home customs and eat the plum puddings of the British season. 



Most of the land requires expensive fertilizers to produce grain. There¬ 
fore New Zealand raises wheat only for her own use and depends on sheep 
and dairy products as money makers. 





■»*» 


Put a New Zealander near water and he will get into it. Many 
great swimmers have been developed, but accidents are so frequent that 
drowning is sometimes called “the New Zealand death.” 






WHERE THE WORKING MAN RULES 


have come about in a natural and orderly way. For ex¬ 
ample, it was essential that farmers should get their prod¬ 
uce to market. There were no big capitalists ready to 
finance railroad building, so means of transportation had 
to be provided by the government. The insurance com¬ 
panies did not adapt their rates to the conditions of the 
country; so the government went into competition. 
Twenty-odd years ago the New Zealand coal-mine opera¬ 
tors took advantage of a diminished coal importation from 
Australia to put up prices for fuel. The government met 
this situation by working the coal beds of the public lands 
on the west coast. This it has continued to do, supplying 
its own railways and competing in the open markets with 
the private mine owners. The latter say they can stand 
the competition quite well, since the government mines are 
worked at a higher cost, not because of a difference in 
wages, for wages are regulated by law, but because the 
state miners take things easier and produce less. The 
‘'government stroke” is a common expression here for the 
way state employees do their work. 

Again, take the story of how the Court of Arbitration 
came to be. It was told me by one of the officials of the 
Labour Department. Said he: 

“The workingmen won their power in New Zealand 
through a strike that failed. At that time the unions con¬ 
trolled many branches of trade and they were fairly well 
united. The Maritime Union, whose members handled 
all the freight at the wharves, was an old organization, 
with plenty of money in its treasury from assessments 
throughout a long period of years. As the funds in¬ 
creased, it was decided that all new members should pay 
an initiation fee proportionate to the share each would 
207 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

have in the assets of the treasury. There were but few 
labouring men who could do this, and the number of new 
members fell off. Although it could not handle all the 
freight, the union would not permit non-union men to work. 
The ship owners would not stand this. They took on 
extra men and defied the union. The union men struck, 
and through their relations with the other unions brought 
about a general strike all over New Zealand. Their de¬ 
mands were unreasonable, and the sympathy of the people 
was with the non-unionists and the ship owners. Men 
came in from Australia and elsewhere to help break the 
strike. The feeling was so great that even clerks in the 
stores asked for vacations, put on overalls, and worked for 
a time as stevedores. The result was that the strikers 
were badly beaten, and they knew it. 

“Then they reconsidered the situation and decided that 
their only chance for a fair show in the future was in elect¬ 
ing working men to Parliament. They began their cam¬ 
paign at once, adopting the rule that every candidate 
of their party must be a working man. They argued 
the question of their rights in the shops, on the 
streets, and on the stump. The people outside the la¬ 
bouring classes became interested in the struggle. Public 
sentiment changed. It was seen that there were two sides 
to the question, and enough working men were elected 
to Parliament to give the unions the balance of power. 
Organized labour in New Zealand has never had a ma¬ 
jority in Parliament but it sent up enough of its own 
men to be a powerful factor in shaping the laws of the 
Dominion.” 

After the end of that great strike one of the first ques¬ 
tions Parliament considered was how to avoid such con- 
208 


WHERE THE WORKING MAN RULES 


flicts in the future. How could it best look after the 
interests of the three parties to labour disputes—the em¬ 
ployers, the employees, and the public? The conciliation 
councils and the Court of Arbitration for industrial dis¬ 
putes were the answer the legislators found to their prob¬ 
lem. 

The workman’s grievance against the '‘company store” 
and the “company house” does not exist in New Zealand, 
where payment for labour in goods is illegal. In any action 
for wages, any goods or articles furnished by the em¬ 
ployer or supplied on his premises cannot be brought for¬ 
ward as an offset, nor can the employer sue his clerks for 
things so bought. Workmen must be paid in money, and 
at least once a month, if they so desire. In absence of 
written agreements those engaged in manual labour must 
be paid weekly, and if not so paid they can attach all money 
due or thereafter to become due to the employer on the 
work. The wages of those who receive less than ten dol¬ 
lars per week cannot be touched for debt and where a man 
goes bankrupt the unpaid wages of his clerks and work¬ 
men for four months preceding are preferential claims on 
the estate. 

For many years the government built workmen’s houses, 
which might be leased or purchased on the instalment 
plan by wage-earners. In the serious shortage of houses 
after the World War these operations were extended. 
Parliament appropriated about five millions of dollars to 
be lent to employers and corporations for building work¬ 
men’s houses and apartments. The law allows borrowers 
from the government’s fund to erect workers’ houses cost¬ 
ing up to thirty-four hundred dollars, and the money is 
advanced on five-per-cent, interest. The workmen get 
209 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

title to the houses by paying each week a little more than 
the ordinary rental charge for such homes. 

As in Australia, the weekly half holiday is compulsory 
and the factory owner or merchant who keeps his place 
open after the hour for closing is fined for doing so, 
whether he requires his employees to work or not. I find 
a record of a man in Foxton who kept two boys under 
eighteen years of age at work on Saturday afternoon. He 
was called up by the Court and heavily fined. Another 
man employed a carter to work on a half holiday. He 
paid five dollars and costs for so doing. It is the same with 
all classes of clerks and it is the same in the factories. 

The day for the weekly afternoon off is not specified by 
law, but is usually fixed every January by the authorities. 
In some towns it comes on Tuesday, in some Wednesday, 
in some Thursday, and in many Saturday. Saturday is 
the day usually chosen by the factories, even though the 
stores in the same town may close on another day. If 
Saturday is the day fixed there are certain classes of store¬ 
keepers such as grocers, butchers, and market men, who 
may choose another day for their weekly half holiday. 

On half holidays the streets of Auckland and the other 
towns in the Dominion are as deserted as on Sunday. The 
hotels are usually open, but as far as I can see, there is 
much less drinking at such times than one would expect, 
and nothing like that on Saturday afternoons in the cities 
of Scotland, or even in our own towns before prohibition. 
Most of the people here go to the parks or out into the 
country. There are cricket matches, golf tournaments, 
and outdoor games of all kinds. 

As a people, the New Zealanders are devoted to sports. 
In football, the national winter sport, New Zealand has 


210 


WHERE THE WORKING MAN RULES 

held the world championship. Everyone, men and women, 
boys and girls, seems to play games of one sort or another. 
They go in for tennis, golf, hockey, polo, and all kinds of 
water sports. Owing to the great numbers who swim in 
the lakes, the rivers, and the surf, there are many fatalities 
every year, and drowning is sometimes called the “New 
Zealand death.” 

Like the Australians, the New Zealanders love nothing 
so well as gambling on horse races. But here the betting 
is regulated by the government and one seldom hears talk 
of crooked methods. Betting is done through a machine, 
the invention of a New Zealander, called a totalisator. 
Only those actually present at the track are allowed to 
bet, so there are no poolrooms such as have caused so 
much scandal in the United States, and there is no gam¬ 
bling by telegraph or telephone. All but ten per cent, 
of the money placed on each race is divided among the 
winners. The tenth held out goes to the government 
and the club that stages the event, the club taking three 
fourths of the amount, and the government the rest. , 

At the meets the horses are all on view for at least half 
an hour before each race. After a spectator has satisfied 
himself as to how he wants to place his bets, he goes to 
the betting machine, gives the number of the horse on 
which he wishes to invest, and purchases tickets stamped 
with that number. The lowest price for a betting slip is 
two dollars and a half, but tickets at ten times that amount 
may be had. 

The totalisator, or the “tote,” as it is always called, is 
a score board with slots in its face. Under each slot is 
the number of a horse, and above each number is the 
amount bet on him. Another window gives the total 

21 I 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

amount put up on the race, and at the left is a board 
showing the dividends that the winner will pay. The 
“tote” pays only on the horses that win first and second 
places. Two thirds of the money on each race, minus the 
ten per cent, for the club and the government, is paid those 
betting on the winner, and the other third is divided among 
the backers of the second horse. 

Seeing the throngs at the races, at football matches, 
and on the beaches, one feels sure that in New Zealand 
Jack will never be a dull boy on account of all work and 
no play. 


212 


CHAPTER XXX 


ON THE GOVERNMENT RAILWAYS 

T AKE a seat beside me on the train from Auckland 
to Rotorua, and see how one part of New Zealand 
looks out-of-doors. We shoot from the city 
out into a rich farming district. The fields are 
green with luxuriant grass, or black where the soil is being 
turned up for planting. Near Auckland the farms and 
farmhouses are small. The pioneer cabins are not so big 
as those in the newly cleared regions of the United States. 
In many places there is a scarcity of lumber. The 
average farmhouse is a wooden cottage of four, five, or 
six rooms roofed with galvanized iron and there are no 
barns, no stables, no outbuildings. The stock feed in the 
fields all the year round, for the grass is always green, and 
the winters are not severe. 

We ride over plains covered with bush, a sort of thick 
scrub growth not unlike dwarf cedars, and then follow for 
miles the banks of the Waikato River, the largest in New 
Zealand. Now we are in another farming section. Here 
the holdings are larger. We cross a big farm where there 
are droves of cattle and sheep. The sheep are feeding on 
turnips, biting them out of the ground in which they are 
growing. We pass through some rolling fields that look 
like the blue-grass country of Kentucky and others that 
remind one of the meadows of old England. Here and 
213 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

there are groves of cabbage trees, each with its tall trunk 
ending in a feather duster of green leaves. 

As we proceed we come into a region of ferns. They 
cover the hills, and in the valleys rise into trees shaped like 
umbrellas. The whole earth is matted with them. The 
tree ferns have stems as thick as a telegraph pole and 
some rise fifteen feet without a branch. 

Farther south we enter the highlands. We pass through 
forests of tall trees wrapped around with vines, their 
wide-spreading branches thick with leaves. Many of 
them are loaded with flowering vines, which ornament the 
living as well as the dead boughs, hanging down amid the 
green leaves or wrapping themselves around the dead 
limbs to make them green again. 

As we go I examine the railroad. Like all in the Domin¬ 
ion, it belongs to the government, and its officials are 
civil-service employees. The conductor, who is called 
the guard, comes through from time to time and punches 
the tickets. This is a regular feature of New Zealand 
travel. I hardly settle down after one punch before the 
guard or an inspector comes and asks for my ticket once 
more, and at the end of a long journey it is as full of holes 
as a sieve. 

The smaller stations serve also as post-offices. They 
have signs showing that they are government savings 
banks and government life-insurance offices as well. 
At every stop a bell is rung half a minute before the train 
starts, and every now and then there is a five-minute 
halt that the passengers may get out and buy a cup of 
tea or a glass of whisky or beer at the hotels, which are 
always found close by the larger stations. The whisky is 
Scotch, and has a smoky, peaty taste. Tea is fourpence 
214 



The railroad from Auckland to Rotorua passes through field after field 
of turnips, where sheep bite the vegetables from the ground. New Zea¬ 
landers say that a good turnip country is a good sheep country. 














About the only privately owned railroad tracks in the Dominion are 
light lines built to get out lumber and coal. They act as feeders to the 
government system with which they are connected. 













ON THE GOVERNMENT RAILWAYS 


a cup and everyone takes it with sugar and milk; it is 
strong, but not bad. Coffee is not sold, for no one wants 
it. The New Zealanders are great eaters of meat and 
drinkers of tea. Nevertheless, they are generally of 
the lean, athletic build. I suppose this is partly on ac¬ 
count of the exercise everyone gets in the out-of-door 
sports. 

My chief complaint against these government railroads 
is their poor heating arrangements. To-day the weather 
is chilly and every passenger has a travelling blanket 
wrapped around his feet. I have one of fox skin, and to 
this I have added my rubber hot water bottle. I take it 
from my bag and have it filled from time to time by the 
girls at the station tea shops. One young woman is 
amazed at my request. She wonders why I want the 
hot water. At last a smile creeps from her lips to her 
eyes. She says, “Oh, I understand. You want it for 
the bai-by (baby). ,, “Yes, my dear,” I say, as I hand 
her a shilling, “but I am the bai-by.” 

One hears a good deal of the English cockney accent in 
New Zealand. “A” is frequently like “i” or “y.” I 
find that I have to translate what is said on the streets or in 
other public places before I understand what it means. 
This is the case in the stores. In buying the fox skin I 
spoke of, I asked the department store clerk at Auckland 
where the rugs were kept. He said: 

“Go through that aisle and down by the lices.” 

I could not think what he meant by “the lices,” and a 
brief vision of crawling insects and frowzy hair came before 
my eyes until on the other side of the store I saw some 
white lace with carpets and rugs beyond and then I knew 
the young man meant laces. As for the letter “h,” it is 
215 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

worse mistreated in New Zealand than in London itself, 
on when it should be off, and off when it should be on. 

Still, these faults in pronunciation are not heard among 
the better class New Zealanders. They pride them¬ 
selves on speaking pure English, and claim that they are 
far superior to the Australians in their use of the mother 
tongue. Of late, a decided movement has been started 
in the schools and throughout the country for pure 
English. 

The gauge of the railway from Auckland to Rotorua 
is only three feet six inches, which is the width of all the 
three thousand miles of track in the two islands. In 
1870, when the government took over the few short lines 
then operated and began its railroad-construction pro¬ 
gramme, it was faced with the problem of building through 
a rough and mountainous country with as little expense 
as possible. So the narrow gauge was adopted. Never¬ 
theless, the cost has been enormous. The total capital 
invested in railways is now almost a quarter of a billion 
dollars, or an average, including all equipment and build¬ 
ings, of upward of sixty thousand dollars per mile. Ex¬ 
ceptionally steep grades have had to be overcome. There 
is a three-mile stretch on the line between Auckland and 
Wellington where the trains climb up one foot in every 
fifteen. This is said to be the steepest railroad grade in 
the world. It is where the line passes over Rimutaka 
Mountain. Two engines are used to make the ascent, and 
the locomotives going down are equipped with steel shoes 
which grip a centre rail and act as brakes. In places 
there are windbreaks built to protect the trains from the 
terrific blasts that sweep over the mountains. On two 
occasions the cars have been blown from the tracks. 

216 


ON THE GOVERNMENT RAILWAYS 

Other items in construction costs are the numerous 
bridges and tunnels. There are many rivers fed by 
heavy rainfalls, and at frequent intervals long spans of 
steel and concrete are found. On the west coast of the 
South Island is the Otira Tunnel, which runs for five 
miles under mountains. The power used in the tunnel 
is electricity. This road was built to bring coal from 
the western fields to the eastern railroad connections. 

The longest run in the Dominion is that from Wel¬ 
lington to Auckland, a distance of but four hundred and 
twenty-six miles. This is the only road in the country 
on which sleeping cars are used. The New Zealand 
sleeper, which is only fifty feet long, is by no means the 
roomy affair to which we are accustomed in the States. 
The car is divided into two- or four-berth compartments 
reached by a narrow corridor extending along its whole 
length. While my berth was being made up I had to stand 
in the hallway with the other three occupants of my com¬ 
partment. 

Though our cars were small, and much of the journey 
was over steep grades, the going was not nearly as bumpy 
as one would suppose, for the engineers take pains to run 
their trains smoothly and do not jerk and jostle the 
passengers at every start and stop as is often the case in 
the States. Practically all the engines and coaches used 
on the Dominion railroads are now built in New Zealand, 
either in the government railway shops or by a private 
firm. 

The New Zealand government believes that the rail¬ 
roads exist for the people, and is managing them in their 
interests and for the development of the country. It 
does not try to make a large profit, being entirely satis- 
217 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

fied with a return of from three to four per cent, per 
annum. In the past, surplus revenues have been returned 
to the taxpayers in the shape of reduced freight rates and 
passenger fares, but in the years of depression after the 
World War the lines earned less than three per cent. 

The regular passenger rate is two cents a mile. Young 
people under twenty-one who are learning a trade or 
business and must go to work by rail are allowed reduced 
fares. All students may travel on cut rates, and in dis¬ 
tricts where there are no schools the railroads take children 
to and from those that are nearest free of charge. This 
is true whether they are going to private or to public 
schools. The government considers this service worth 
what it costs because it promotes popular education. Now 
and then special trains are run to take the school children 
out over the country for practical lessons in geography. 
The charge for such excursions just about covers the cost 
of running the extra trains, and any school can have an 
instructive trip of this kind upon the request of the 
teacher in charge. 

One New Zealander with whom I talked said: 

“ It is our idea that the railroads are the servants of the 
people. We want to bring every farmer’s produce to the 
markets at the lowest cost, and to make it possible for our 
people to compete with those of other lands in the markets 
of the world. If we can build railroads so that the man 
one hundred miles from the seaboard can get his produce 
aboard ship at the same cost as the man who lives only 
ten miles away, the first man’s land becomes as valuable 
as that of the land-holder near the coast. Then we get 
more taxes out of him and he becomes a more prosperous 
member of the community. We are now devoting the 
218 


ON THE GOVERNMENT RAILWAYS 


roads largely to opening up new country, and are push¬ 
ing them out into the public lands.” 

“I notice that you have more than fifteen thousand 
government railway employees,” said I. “Is not the 
service on the railroads seriously affected by the fact 
that the government runs them? Do not the clerks and 
the trainmen vote to keep in power the politicians who 
promise them the most in the way of raising their wages 
or enabling them to hold their jobs?” 

“ I don't think there has been any attempt to do any¬ 
thing of that kind, and I doubt if it could succeed,” was 
the reply. “Our civil-service rules are rigid and we main¬ 
tain them. There are special boards to which railroad 
employees may bring their grievances. Furthermore, 
when a new party comes in, there is no wholesale overturn¬ 
ing of the government service such as, I understand, used 
to prevail in your country. Only the elected officials are 
changed. Promotion in government service is by seniority, 
and few men, if any, get their jobs through political pull.” 


219 


CHAPTER XXXI 


THE YELLOWSTONE OF NEW ZEALAND 

M ARK TWAIN said Pittsburgh looked like “Hell 
with the lid off.” I have come to a part of 
New Zealand that looks like “Hell with the 
lid on,” save that there are a thousand and 
one holes in the cover, from which all sorts of poisonous 
gases, malodorous smells, boiling springs, and other in¬ 
fernal manifestations are pouring forth. I am in the 
Yellowstone Park of New Zealand, a land of volcanoes, 
geysers, earthquakes, and lakes of boiling mud, a land 
in which old Mother Earth seems afflicted with perpetual 
colic and is ever vomiting forth hot paint, or belching out 
steam full of alum. 

This region is situated near the centre of the North 
Island, one hundred and seventy-one miles southeast of 
Auckland. It is about thirty miles wide and one hundred 
miles long, covering almost two million acres. The crust 
upon it is so thin that in walking or riding over it one 
seems to hear a thousand devils grumbling and raging 
below, and almost expects to crash through into Hades at 
any moment. 

Here the face of the earth changes from week to week. 
Great cracks open, new boiling pools burst forth, and there 
are frequent earthquakes. One spot is known as Earth¬ 
quake Flat, because it shivers and shakes regularly every 
ten minutes. On top of a mountain in the geyser field 


220 


THE YELLOWSTONE OF NEW ZEALAND 

there is a great hole called the "Safety Valve of New Zea¬ 
land, ” out of which constantly roars a column of steam. 
Now and then a mountain breaks into eruption. Some of 
the volcanoes are active, and no one knows when one of 
those now dormant may spring into life, as Mount Tara- 
wera did in 1886. In that year, on the 10th of June, 
several native villages were covered to a depth of sixty 
feet by a deluge of mud. Both houses and inhabitants 
were destroyed as were those of Pompeii and Herculaneum 
by the eruption of Vesuvius centuries ago. The bottom of 
a big lake was blown out and in its place came a roaring 
crater, which sent up a column of steam to a height of 
almost three miles. The earth broke open. There was 
one crack nine miles long. New lakes were formed, clouds 
of ashes and dust turned noon to night, and throughout the 
region there was a downpour of water, mud, and stones. 
The noise of the explosion was heard five hundred miles 
away. 

The eruption destroyed the famous pink terraces of the 
New Zealand Yellowstone. The terraces were in the form 
of basins made by the sediment from the mineral waters of 
a geyser one hundred feet above the lake. They were 
filled with the clearest of boiling water, blue at the topmost 
terrace, and changing in colour to a lighter hue as it fell 
from basin to basin. The walls of the terraces seemed to 
be made of jewels, some pink, others white. The water 
played over them in tiny cascades, and when the sun shone 
the hillsides were alive with showers of diamonds, pearls, 
emeralds, and rubies. Since the great eruption, terraces 
have not formed again, as it was hoped they would, though 
small and imperfect basins of similar structure are occa¬ 
sionally seen to-day. 


221 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

In my journey here from Auckland, the train climbed 
to an elevation of about one thousand feet above the sea. 
As we entered the volcanic region the earth seemed hollow, 
and it rumbled and grumbled as the cars went over it. I 
saw steam coming forth from the cracks here and there 
and wondered if the crust might not break and drop us 
into the bubbling, boiling, steaming mass that evidently 
lay below. 

We passed the village of Koutu, which is almost hidden 
in columns of steam pouring forth from the ground, and 
skirted the shores of Lake Rotorua to the town of Rotorua 
itself. Rotorua is the most famous health resort of the 
South Seas. The country about it is clouded with vapour 
from pools of boiling water, each of which has medicinal 
properties. There are hotels and cottages and all the 
surroundings of similar resorts in the United States or Eu¬ 
rope. The government has charge of the springs and fixes 
the rates for baths and accommodations, thus preserving 
the use of the place for the people at reasonable cost. 

There are public gardens in which are the great bath 
houses and other buildings. On the grassy lawns tourists 
and health seekers may bowl and play tennis and croquet. 
There are long borders of beautiful flowers. The town is 
laid out in broad streets shaded by oaks, pines, and gums, 
through which the blue waters of Lake Rotorua may be 
seen sparkling in the sunlight. It is no wonder that tens 
of thousands of visitors come every year to this spot. 

Many of the baths have curious names. One, owing 
to the beauty it gives the complexion, was years ago 
named after the famous French actress, Madame Rachel. 
Another is called the Priest Bath, another the Painkiller, a 
third the Coffee Pot, and a fourth the Blue Bath. The 


222 



Rotorua, the Yellowstone of New Zealand, with its hot springs baths 
and geysers, is the chief health resort of the Dominion. The hotels and 
even the sanatoriums are controlled by the government. 

















Wairoa never plays unless it is given a barrel of soap—then it usually 
goes up in great style. But except on special occasions the government 
does not permit it to be dosed, as this weakens a geyser. 










THE YELLOWSTONE OF NEW ZEALAND 


Lobster Bath is so hot that it turns one the colour of a 
boiled lobster. The names sound queer at first, and when 
I was told I could have a half hour at The Priest, I felt 
like protesting I was not a Catholic, but a cast-iron 
Presbyterian. 

Joking aside, the baths are wonderful. The Rachel is 
a boiling cauldron of enormous depth with a flow of fifty 
thousand gallons daily. The water evidently contains 
much sulphuretted hydrogen, for a smell of bad eggs fills 
the air all around it. The visitor is usually disgusted until 
he steps into the pool. Then his skin seems to have turned 
to satin, and he is as comfortable as though on beds of rose 
leaves. The Coffee Pot ;ool is covered with an oily 
slime and the water is thick, brown, and muddy, but it 
gives great relief to any one suffering from rheumatism. 
In the Spout Bath, the patient goes down into a sort of 
cave, where the warm water pours on him from a spout 
above. The boiling water from one of the springs is mixed 
with waters of a cold lake to make the temperature endur¬ 
able. Others of the baths have such strong mineral 
properties that one must be examined by a doctor before 
he can enter them. 

For my guide in visiting the geysers, I have one of the 
Maoris, many of whom live in this region. I chose a woman 
who spoke fair English to take me through the crackling, 
steaming, rumbling, spurting region about me. She leads 
me from one wonder to another. Here is a pool of boiling, 
bubbling mud which now and then shoots a column high 
into the air. That great round vat with the white walls 
is made of the silica and other minerals thrown up by a 
geyser called the Brain Pot. That vast pool in which 
the yellow fluid seethes and boils is known as the Cham- 
223 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

pagne Pool; its contents fizz like so much champagne, 
and the gases now and then throw the water up to a height 
of six or eight feet. The walls are of different colours, here 
white, there dark red, and there yellow with sulphur. We 
go to see the Pohutu Geyser, which formerly twice a day 
sent a majestic column of water high into the air for from 
twenty minutes to three hours at a time. But to-day 
Pohutu sulks and is entirely unreliable, though a way has 
been found to make it perform on demand. When some 
distinguished visitor comes along, the officials give the 
geyser an emetic of several barrels of soap, and then it 
plays up in great style. And that reminds me of the 
Pack-horse Mud Geyser, so named because it was not 
active until one day a pack horse fell into it. Before that 
it was simply a quiet pool of mud containing sulphuric 
acid. 

One of the most remarkable of all the geysers of this 
whole region was the Waimangu, which during the years of 
its activity was undoubtedly the greatest wonder of the 
kind in the world. It was not discovered until 1901 and 
for five years after that it played almost every day. It 
was fierce “play,” though, for, unlike the ordinary geyser, 
the Waimangu flung up black mud and stones, as well as 
scalding water, sometimes to the height of fifteen hundred 
feet. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, it stopped, 
though it is believed that it may at any time break forth 
again. Once two girls and a guide were caught in the 
flood of scalding mud and were killed. Now one sees 
there only a hollow of some two acres covered with black, 
steaming water. 

But come and take a trip with me into the mouth of 
Hell itself. This is a region about twelve miles from 
224 


THE YELLOWSTONE OF NEW ZEALAND 


Rotorua. We sail across the lake, passing over what was 
evidently once a volcanic crater, then take horses across 
country to Tikitere. As we near it we see great columns 
of steam rising into the air. We tie our horses and, staff 
in hand, plunge into the vapour. We are in the midst of 
acres of boiling springs separated by thin walls upon which 
we walk, looking down into the terrible commotion below. 

Here is a whirlpool. The water is as black as ink. It 
boils and steams and bubbles and spits. It is hotter than 
the “burning fiery furnace” into which King Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Watch 
out, for if your foot slips you will be scalded to death. 

Now we are on a great yellow mound looking into a 
sulphur pool, the gases of which almost sicken us as we 
stoop over. The pool is filled with boiling mud. The 
steam is so thick we can hardly see through it. Be careful 
where you step. A girl slipped into that vat the other day 
and came out cooked. 

Look at this hole! See how it churns up mud and oil. 
It makes a noise like running machinery and the Maoris 
have named it the Donkey Engine. 

See the white stuff on which you are standing. It looks 
like salt. You have passed out of the sulphur fields and 
are now on hills of snow, which glisten in contrast with 
the boiling mud about you. Pick up some of the snow or 
salt and taste it. How it puckers your mouth! Your lips 
and tongue wither as though you had bitten into a green 
persimmon. The stuff is neither salt nor snow. It is 
alum. There are bushels of it here, mixed with other 
minerals, and in some parts of New Zealand there are 
cliffs of alum and springs that flow alum water. 

But let us take a look at the Inferno. We walk through 
225 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

a stream over a thin crust of sulphur and gaze down into a 
great vat twenty feet deep and so large that you could drop 
a native house into it. It seems to be filled with boiling 
paint, and as it seethes it now and then throws up a column 
of mud. The odour is nauseating and we give our hands to 
the guides and beg them to lead us away. We go out 
through clouds of camphor steam from the Devil's Punch 
Bowl, and on into the open, where there are green hills, 
blue sky, and the good earth of every day. 


226 



White Island is a roaring, steaming sulphur pit, and has a lake of hot, 
acid water. The earth is treacherous and corrosive, and there is no sign 
of life except the birds of the air. 



The government restaurant at Lake Taupo is designed after the typical 
Maori house, with its wonderfully carved columns, walls, and rafters. 
Such houses took years to build and were often fifty feet long. 







Much of the charm of the poi dance comes from the flash and play of 
light fibre balls on short flax strings. The balls are swung in time to the 
soft crooning of the Maori women as they dance. 



In the hot springs district Mother Nature helps the Maori housewife 
by providing outdoor fireless cookers. Vessels of food are placed over 
holes or in the hot pools—and that is all there is to it. 






CHAPTER XXXII 


THE MAORIS 

T HIS morning I stood and watched a crowd of 
Maori girls and boys swimming together in one 
of the steaming pools near my hotel at Rotorua. 
The pool was about twenty feet square, and in it 
were a dozen children as naked as the day they were born. 
Steam rose from the water, and in the rays of the morn¬ 
ing sun the brown bodies shone through the mist. One 
of the bathers was a girl of fourteen. She was pouring 
water over herself with a bucket, when I threw a silver 
sixpence into the pool. With all the rest she dived for it, 
finally emerging with the coin in her mouth. As I walked 
on to other pools I saw here and there the heads of men 
and women floating, as it were, upon the water. They 
were Maoris, but whether they were taking this method of 
getting warm or merely having their morning baths I do 
not know. 

I have been into many of the Maori houses. They are a 
sort of cross between an Indian hut and an English tenant 
cottage. About Rotorua many of them are built directly 
over the steaming earth, and have warm bathing pools 
behind them. In this part of New Zealand old Mother 
Earth is kind to her Maori daughters; she does their cook¬ 
ing for them. They never have to make a fire or put the 
kettle on. Each woman has a steam cooker of her own, 
always at the right temperature. This cooker is usually 
227 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

an old wooden box with the lid knocked out and slats 
nailed on the bottom, sunk into the earth over a steam 
hole. The food is dropped in, an old piece of carpet or 
cloth is thrown over the top of the box, and in due time 
the meal is cooked. 

Cooking is done also in the boiling pools. Potatoes are 
pared and put into bags made of a network of flax, each 
holding a quarter or half peck. The bag is dropped into 
the pool and tied with a string to a stake outside. In a 
little while the potatoes are ready for eating. Meat may 
be prepared the same way or it may be put into a bucket 
and steamed. In fact, the Rotorua Maoris, who now cele¬ 
brate Christmas in British fashion, cook their plum pud¬ 
dings in these petty volcanoes. 

In some places all the villagers cook at one great vat, and 
in others, such as Whakarewarewa, all do their washing in 
the same hot pool, the water of which is soft and cleansing. 

It is surprising how few Maoris one sees in travelling 
through New Zealand. According to the last census there 
are about fifty-two thousand of the aborigines living in the 
Dominion, most of them on the North Island. The race 
is more than holding its own, and has increased by about 
ten thousand persons in the last thirty years. Most of 
the Maoris are scattered over the country in villages 
situated on lands reserved for them. They are represented 
in Parliament by four members, and although subject to 
the laws of New Zealand, they are governed largely through 
their own chiefs. The better class dress in European 
clothes, both men and women affecting bright colours. 

No one knows where the Maoris came from, although a 
number of scientists are convinced that they navigated to 
the New Zealand islands from Hawaii. Others believe 
228 


THE MAORIS 

that they originated in Tahiti or Tonga. They have light 
brown complexions and high cheek bones and their noses 
are more like those of the Anglo-Saxon than of the North 
American Indian. The men are of magnificent physique, 
being tall, broad-shouldered heavyweights, with strong 
necks, big hands, and big feet. They excel in games, es¬ 
pecially in football and other contests where quickness of 
eye and hand is essential. Nearly all of the men speak 
English. They are orderly and well-behaved, and even 
when drunk do not cause as much trouble as do our 
Indians. 

I rather like the Maori women. The older ones are not 
especially good looking, but they seem well disposed and 
pleasant. Some of the younger ones are beautiful and 
many have rosy complexions. They have luxuriant dark 
hair, heavy eyebrows, and liquid black eyes full of soul. 
Some of them are clean and nearly all are intelligent. 
Their beauty vanishes with years. Now and then one 
sees an old native woman with her chin and lips tattooed, 
after the ancient fashion. This was a sign of a wife’s sub¬ 
mission to her husband. The young women of to-day do 
not thus mar their good looks. 

The Maoris used to be experts in tattooing. In the past 
both men and women decorated not only their faces but 
most of their bodies in that way. Every great chief had 
his face covered with ornamental spirals and designs pic¬ 
turing his exploits in battle and was tattooed on the 
thighs and hips in patterns that often extended from his 
knees to his waist, giving him the appearance of having on 
a pair of neat-fitting trunks. 

The women were tattooed chiefly on the lips and chin, 
with a sort of fish-hook curl at the corner of each eye. 

229 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Some of them had their thighs and breasts decorated. 
The tattooing instrument was a small bone chisel, which 
was driven in with a mallet. The pain was so great that 
the work could be done only a little at a time, and a com¬ 
plete job often took years. 

When the British first came to New Zealand cannibalism 
was quite general among the Maoris. The tribes warred 
with one another, and after a battle there was always a 
feast of human flesh, in which the women were not allowed 
to join. The greatest insult one Maori could offer another 
was to hint that the man’s father had been eaten; for this 
was considered a family disgrace. 

I have before me a paper that tells just how one of 
these cannibal feasts was conducted. The corpse of one 
of those killed in the fight was sacrificed to the god of war 
and the rest of the dead were given over to the braves who 
had taken part in the battle. The cooking ovens were dug 
out of the earth and the human flesh was thrown in and 
kept there for about twenty-four hours. When it was 
roasted the chief had the first bite, then his sons, and then 
the whole army. The eating was accompanied with sing¬ 
ing and dancing, and all gorged themselves to such an ex¬ 
tent that many died after the banquet. When the feast 
was over the remains were packed up in baskets and sent 
around to the neighbouring tribes. Any tribe that ac¬ 
cepted the offering was supposed to have made a treaty of 
friendship with the senders and to be ready to fight with 
them thereafter. 

In spite of their cannibalism, the Maoris were more ad¬ 
vanced in civilization than our American Indians. They 
had a social organization of their own, the people of each 
tribe being divided into classes consisting of priests, chiefs, 
230 



“This morning I stood and watched a crowd of Maori girls and boys 
swimming together and diving for pennies in one of the steaming pools near 
my hotel at Rotorua/’ 













The Maori baka used to precede battles and was intended to work the 
braves into a fury, for the fight. Nowadays the hakas are frequently 
staged for the benefit of tourists. 




THE MAORIS 


a middle class, and slaves. They were warlike and it is 
doubtful whether the British could have gained a foothold 
on the islands without great loss of life had it not been 
for the dissensions among the various tribes. 

Maori marriage customs were much like those of savages 
in other parts of the world. Sometimes girls were carried 
off by force, and then the friends of the groom and the 
friends of the bride would fight each other. Both polyg¬ 
amy and divorce were allowed and the chiefs usually had 
several wives. The Maori gods were demons who were 
feared rather than reverenced or worshipped. 

The men were fishers and fighters, and the women 
cooked the food, wove baskets, brought the firewood, and 
made the clothing. The men were not hunters, for there 
was no big game in the islands. They snared the wild 
pigeons and other birds. When Captain Cook came along 
in 1769 he left the natives the first pigs they had ever seen. 

In the days of tribal warfare the natives often barricaded 
themselves within an enclosure called a pa, the term now 
used for their settlements. As day after day they pur¬ 
sued their policy of “watchful waiting” for their enemies, 
the men occupied themselves with wood carving, in which 
they became most expert. To-day one sometimes sees the 
doorways of their houses beautifully and accurately carved 
as in the olden times. They had no patterns but made up’ 
their designs as they went along. 

The women used to make most elaborate and beautiful 
feather cloaks, plaiting the soft, downy plumage of the 
kiwi into woven flax. These cloaks were handed down 
from mother to daughter. Few are made nowadays, but 
they are sometimes worn on special occasions and in the 
poi dances. 


231 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

For the poi dance the girls are dressed in kiwi-feather 
cloaks or in loose embroidered draperies of gay colours. 
Their long, wavy dark hair is confined only by ribbons 
about their foreheads. Usually their feet are bare. 
The dance gets its name from the two small balls of flax 
fibre with which each girl is provided. These are attached 
to strings and, as the girls go through various movements, 
representing such things as swimming, the flight of butter¬ 
flies, the soaring of birds, or the rowing of a canoe, the 
poi balls are swung in perfect time. The music is a soft 
crooning, which is delightful, as the Maoris all have beauti¬ 
ful speaking and singing voices. 

The men’s dance, the haka, is quite different. In olden 
times this usually preceded a battle and was intended not 
only to work the braves into a state of fury but also to put 
them in good condition for the fight. It calls into play prac¬ 
tically every muscle of the body. It is always possible for 
tourists to see some kind of a haka, but only on great 
occasions, and for distinguished visitors, like the Prince 
of Wales, for example, is it witnessed in its true glory. 
Then Maoris, who in ordinary life may be doctors, lawyers, 
grocers, and landlords, put patches of black paint on their 
faces, array themselves in knee skirts of flax fibre, and 
arm themselves with feather-tufted spears. With their 
bodies bare to the waist and with bare feet and legs, they 
leap and stamp, stick out their tongues, and make faces 
such as the old natives believed would frighten their 
enemies, give sharp barking shouts, slap their knees, and 
swing their spears in perfect time to the music of a band. 

In their primitive state the Maoris were, of course, 
superstitious and traces of their ancient beliefs are still 
to be found. For instance, near the native fort at Rotorua 
232 


THE MAORIS 


is a kind of bird box set on top of a pole. This was a 
spirit house, and when danger was near, the spirit who 
lived in it was supposed to shout out a warning to the 
people. Within the memory of old native women the 
Maoris used to put food in the box for the spirit. 

Like other South Sea Islanders the Maoris believed in 
the tapu, by which certain things were forbidden. For 
example, a chief, his family, and his belongings were 
tapu. A chief who touched his own head must put 
his fingers to his nose and snuff up the sacred con¬ 
tagion from his head or else he would suffer the con¬ 
sequences of tapu. One might make a tree tapu by giving 
it a chop with an axe. Certain animals, places, and foods 
were forbidden. There are cases on record where natives 
in perfect health died in great agony after finding they 
had made a mistake and eaten some food that was tapu. 
Charms were worn to ward off evil. The most common 
was a piece of green stone carved into a grotesque figure 
with rolling eyes and tongue lolling out. This is the tiki, 
or green charm, which is still often worn by the native 
women on chains about their necks. 

It gives one an idea of how recently the Maoris were 
savages, feared by the pioneers, to hear the story of the 
first white man born in the Wellington District, who 
is still alive. He remembers how one night when he 
was three or four years of age the Maoris came upon 
the hut that his parents had set up in the bush. 
The older people were obliged to run for their lives, 
but the child was too heavy to carry and could not walk 
well. If they tried to take him, all might be captured and 
killed. So he was thrust far up the chimney and told 
that whatever happened he must make no sound. There 
233 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

he spent the rest of the night, without a cry, while the 
Maoris searched the house and took away whatever struck 
their fancies. In the morning, after the natives had left, 
his parents returned and took him down from his perch, 
half dead with fright and exhaustion. 

Yet the grandchildren of those uncivilized Maoris are 
to-day occupying important positions in the Dominion, 
acting as members of Parliament and making good in 
various professions. They had their own battalion in the 
Anzac forces in the World War and were conspicuous for 
bravery. Many of them married French girls. The cul¬ 
tured Maori is received in any society. The outstand¬ 
ing orator of New Zealand is Sir James Carroll, the son 
of an Irishman and a full-blooded Maori woman. He 
has served in the highest position his country can be¬ 
stow, for he has been acting Prime Minister of the Domin¬ 
ion. 

In New Zealand, while intermarriage with the Maoris is 
not exactly favoured, neither is it actually frowned upon, 
and the number of half castes is increasing. Still, one 
hears gossip about mixed marriages. There is the case 
of a wealthy New Zealand girl who announced her in¬ 
tention of marrying a native. Her mother was opposed 
and took her daughter on a trip around the world. But 
the girl returned and married her Maori. Her children 
are rather dark, yet they go everywhere. Another case I 
have heard of is that of an Englishman of good family who 
married a native and took her to England. Their chil¬ 
dren were educated on the Continent and did not realize 
the status of their mother until their father died and she 
returned with them to New Zealand. Then she went 
back to her Maori relations. The oldest daughter was 

234 


THE MAORIS 


engaged to an officer in the British army, but broke her 
engagement when she found out about the roots of her 
family tree. 

The Maoris now own about five million acres of land 
in the Dominion, by far the larger part of it in the North 
Island. They are fairly good farmers, though inclined 
to be indolent. Sometimes a native will sell some of his 
land, take the cash, and live high while it lasts. The less 
educated man who comes into money usually gets himself 
a high-powered car and a loud checked suit; he buys his 
wife an expensive fur coat and makes all the display 
possible. The natives are protected by the government 
through special land boards, which will not allow a Maori 
to part with all his land. 


235 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


MUTTON AND BUTTER FOR LONDON TABLES 


N EW ZEALAND is one of the leading sheep 
countries of the world, and Christchurch is its 
mutton metropolis. It is a South Island city 
of more than seventy thousand people, situated 
near the sea on the Canterbury Plains, the breeding 
ground of the sheep that have made New Zealand mutton 
famous. 

Though so small, the Dominion ranks sixth in the num¬ 
ber of its sheep. Thousands of carcasses are frozen in 
this country every year and a fleet of steamers is always 
moving over the oceans carrying delicious mutton chops 
and roasts to the tables of England. The distance to 
London via the Panama Canal is more than eleven 
thousand miles. It is even farther by the Cape of Good 
Hope or the Suez Canal, but nevertheless both the cost 
of rearing the sheep and the freight charges are so low 
that New Zealand mutton can be sold in London for less 
than that raised in England itself. 

Let me give you some idea of New Zealand’s sheep 
industry. It is the one out of which the country makes 
the most money, though dairying is now a close second. 
There are in the Dominion about twenty-two million 
sheep, or enough to give every man, woman, and child a 
flock of eighteen. Although only one thirtieth the size of 
the United States, New Zealand has nearly half as many 
236 


MUTTON AND BUTTER FOR LONDON 

sheep as we have, and its wool production is proportion¬ 
ately much greater than ours. It exports annually fifty- 
five million dollars’ worth of frozen mutton, five million 
dollars’ worth of tallow, and fifty-five million dollars’ 
worth of wool. 

There are sheep farms everywhere. I have visited many 
of them and have found them much better kept than simi¬ 
lar properties in the United States. They are divided 
into large fields fenced with wire. This is primarily a 
grazing country, and its future seems to be in sheep raising 
and dairying. The New Zealand farmer does not have to 
house his stock. The soil is fertile, and there is abundant 
rainfall, so that he can produce meat at much less cost 
than if he lived in a land of droughts, scanty grass, and 
more severe winters. Sixteen million acres have been sown 
in grasses and the greater part of the crops grown is fed 
to sheep and cattle. 

In Australia sheep are reared chiefly for their wool. 
Here they are bred for their meat as well. The discovery 
that Canterbury mutton could be frozen and shipped to 
England where, because of its delicate flavour, it com¬ 
manded high prices, revolutionized farming in the Domin¬ 
ion. Formerly sheep had been fed on wild grasses and 
raised for their wool and tallow. When it was realized 
that native mutton could be marketed abroad at a profit, 
special studies were made of the kinds of food producing 
the best meat and the grazing lands were intensively culti¬ 
vated for fodder. The absence of sour swamp grasses 
and weeds in the pasturage of the country has been sug¬ 
gested as a reason for the fine flavour of its mutton. 

New Zealand mutton won its reputation as Canterbury 
mutton, though by no means all of it was even then raised 
237 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

on the Canterbury Plains. The South Island was, it is 
true, the cradle of the industry, which now flourishes 
over the whole of the Dominion, but there is said to be 
no finer sheep country in the world than the limestone 
downs of Hawke’s Bay on the North Island. Many of 
the sheep stations are very large, for it has been found 
that it is best to have only two or three animals to an 
acre of pasture land, and some of the flocks number five 
thousand, ten thousand, and even twenty thousand head. 
The size of the average flock from year to year is about 
one thousand. 

The chief breeds of sheep are the Lincolns, the Leicesters, 
the Corriedales, the Southdowns, and the Romneys. 
The Lincolns thrive best on the wild lands and hills of the 
North Island, the Romney Marsh on moist soil, and the 
Merinos on the dry plains. The best mutton sheep are 
cross-breds, which are known as freezers. 

There is an old saying that you can’t get blood out of 
turnips, but the New Zealanders do it by feeding them to 
sheep. In fact, practically every good chop I eat here is 
mostly turnips, and the people tell me that turnip-fed 
sheep produce the best mutton. In buying a sheep farm 
the first question asked is whether the land will raise 
turnips, and if so the price is much higher than it would 
be otherwise. Turnip fields are to be seen on every land¬ 
scape, of which they often form a striking feature. The 
crop grows luxuriantly and forms a carpet of bright green. 
Later on, when the sheep have had their first chance at it, 
the green has all disappeared and in its place there is a 
great bed of black soil covered with white balls in rows. 
The field looks as though it had been ploughed and sown 
with billiard balls. I have watched the sheep biting these 
238 



Most of New Zealand’s butter is sold abroad on the cooperative basis, 
the farmers and the creameries dividing the profits. None can be exported 
until it has been graded by a government expert. 




















The tattooed chieftain has almost entirely disappeared, but in the past 
the Maori men used to cover most of their faces and bodies with orna¬ 
mental spirals. The women were tattooed only on lips and chin. 








MUTTON AND BUTTER FOR LONDON 


balls. They eat them out of the ground, digging away 
until even the roots have disappeared. Sometimes the 
farmers dig up the turnips and feed them to their flocks. 
Alfalfa and mangel-wurzels, a coarse kind of beet, are 
also grown for fattening sheep. 

On the larger estates the sheep are kept in enormous 
fields, and a few hands suffice to care for a flock of thou¬ 
sands. Like most of the workers of New Zealand, the 
shepherds are unionized and their wages and hours have 
been established throughout the industry. In some cases 
their employers add to the regular wages by paying a 
bonus at the close of the season. I met one man who told 
me he gave each of his hands fifty dollars when the hardest 
of the work was done. 

The shearing,which usually begins inSeptemberandlasts 
until January, is done by machinery. A gang of shearers 
will work through a district with their machines, going from 
farm to farm like wheat harvesters or a threshing crew in 
the United States. Some of the farms have their own shear¬ 
ing sheds, but often several sheep stations will own one 
in common, to which all the flocks are driven. Occasion¬ 
ally shearers come over from Australia, where the season 
is earlier, but they are more often New Zealand men with 
small farms of their own or some other occupation for the 
rest of the year. They are organized, of course, and are 
veritable autocrats, with the power of financial life or death 
over the wool growers. If the farmers wait until late 
summer for the clip, the fleeces get full of seeds from the 
grasses on which the sheep feed, making “seedy wool/’ 
which brings poor prices. It does not pay the farmer to 
quarrel with the shearers when the summer suns of January 
are ripening the grass seeds. 

239 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

The wool clips vary greatly according to the breeds of 
sheep. The Merino fleeces range all the way from four to 
seven pounds each, while the Leicesters will average ten 
pounds and the Lincolns about eleven pounds. There 
are sheep which produce from twenty to thirty pounds of 
wool at a clip, but these are exceptional. 

Though not so numerous as in Australia, rabbits are 
among the pests of the New Zealand sheep districts. They 
were introduced into the islands as pets and with the idea 
also that they might furnish meat. They increased so 
rapidly that they threatened to overrun the whole coun¬ 
try and eat up all its pasturage. Millions of dollars have 
been spent in killing them or in fencing them out of the 
sheep lands and the government distributes poisoned oats 
from its various agricultural stations to help the farmers 
destroy them. Trapping rabbits for their skins has be¬ 
come an important industry, in which many men are en¬ 
gaged, and this has tended to make them less of a menace 
to the sheep runs. Exports of rabbit skins now bring in 
between two and three million dollars annually. Most of 
them go to Great Britain and the United States where the 
fur is manufactured into felt hats. It takes the fur of 
six rabbits to make a man’s hat. Considerable numbers of 
frozen rabbits are also shipped from Dunedin to the 
world’s markets. 

But let us go to one of the refrigeration plants and see 
just how mutton is prepared for London dinner tables. 
New Zealand has fifty meat-freezing plants, and the 
largest and oldest of all is here at Christchurch. It is 
known as the Belfast Freezing Works and is a cooperative 
institution, the sheep owners being the principal stock¬ 
holders. 


240 


MUTTON AND BUTTER FOR LONDON 


We take a car and ride out to the works, which are 
within a few miles of Christchurch. The buildings consist 
of great sheds surrounded by paddocks filled with sheep 
ready for killing. Near by are drying yards, which at 
first sight seem covered with snow, but as we get closer 
we see that they are spotted with great pilesof newly washed 
wool. We are first taken to the sheep yards where we watch 
the men drive the animals up a runway to the killing 
station on the second floor. Several old sheep are used 
day after day and year after year as the advance guard to 
lead their brothers to slaughter. They start the pro¬ 
cession, and the thousands behind, sheep-like, follow them, 
Often ten thousand sheep pass up that roadway in one 
day. 

The sheep are killed at the rate of ten every minute, and 
it is only seven minutes from the time the live sheep is 
seized until it is ready for freezing. There is a long string 
of carcasses steadily flowing out of the killing station into 
the cooling room and later on from there down to the 
freezing chambers, where the temperature is eight de¬ 
grees above zero. 

In three days the sheep are as hard as stone. Tap one 
of the carcasses as we stand in a freezing room. It 
resounds like a drum. Take one down and rest it on the 
floor; it is so stiff that it stands alone. My fingers feel 
frost-bitten as I take notes, and we are glad to get out. 

After a look at the freezing machinery, which the mana¬ 
ger tells us came from America, we go to the other depart¬ 
ments of the works to see what is being done with the 
by-products. In one place sheep tongues are being canned 
to be shipped all over the world. The cooking is done in 
great vats in which the water is kept boiling by steam 
241 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

pipes. The white tongues bob up and down in the boiling 
water and from time to time bare-armed men take some 
out with pitchforks and put others in their places. 

In another room we see workers rendering fat; in another 
they are dressing the sheep heads, and in others they are 
pulling wool from the skins and spreading it out to dry. 
A curious department is that where the blood and bones 
are made into fertilizer. The dried blood is roasted in a 
great cylinder several hundred feet long. On the floor 
I see a pile of blood as big as a small haystack. It smells 
like ammonia, and my eyes water as I look. 

This blood is very valuable for manure. For a long 
time it went to waste in most of the slaughter houses and 
freezing plants of New Zealand. Then some Americans 
came down and made a contract for the product. The 
New Zealanders soon saw that the foreigners were mak¬ 
ing a good thing out of their blood money, and concluded 
to take the profit themselves. When the time came for 
the renewal of the contract they refused, and now, I am 
told, this and the other by-products of the Christchurch 
plant pay about all of the expenses of its operation. 

As we walk through the works I ask the manager to tell 
me about his labour and costs. He replies that the 
average earnings of the men are about twenty-five dollars 
for a forty-four-hour week. Except on Saturdays the 
men come to the factory at eight o'clock in the morning 
and work until five in the afternoon, taking an hour off 
for dinner. They have in addition to this what are called 
“smoke-o’s.” These are recesses of ten minutes twice 
a day for a smoke. The foreman fixes the times, which 
are usually ten o’clock in the morning and three in the 
afternoon. These smoke recesses are common in all 
242 



New Zealand will probably remain an agricultural country, dependent 
on sea traffic for her manufactured goods. She has plenty of deep bays 
and inlets for harbouring even the largest ships. 



To the sheep station owner the rabbit is an unmitigated evil, but to trap¬ 
pers, freezing works, and skin exporters, it is a valuable animal. 








The volcanic cone of Mount Egmont looks down on Taranaki, one of 
the world’s richest dairy regions. New Zealand’s climate is so mild and 
her pasturage so good that stock can feed outdoors the year round. 



MUTTON AND BUTTER FOR LONDON 


New Zealand factories. In places where many women 
are employed, they stop work for tea every afternoon. 

As far as I can see, the men seem contented with their 
jobs. Many of them own little cottages near the works, 
the average working man’s house costing about twenty- 
five hundred dollars. The manager tells me that if a man 
is ordinarily economical he can pay for his home in five 
years, and that most of the men save money. He says 
that the factory insures the lives of its employees upon 
such terms that if they are killed while on duty their heirs 
will receive from fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred 
dollars, according to the amount of their policies. 

Handling the wool clip of New Zealand is another big 
business in the Dominion. As yet only a small proportion 
is kept at home to be used by her factories. The mills 
take around seven million pounds in a total production 
of nearly two hundred million pounds. New Zealanders 
say that they do not expect they will ever be serious 
competitors with the woollen mills of old England. They 
declare that they prefer to maintain the present high 
standard of living for the working classes rather than 
bring in cheap foreign labour for factories. There are but 
twelve woollen mills in the country and only three of 
these, the ones at Petone, Kaiapoi, and Dunedin, are 
large establishments. The Kaiapoi mill is near Christ¬ 
church and is famous for making the most beautiful 
travelling rugs in the world. 

The Kaiapoi mills employ many girls. They are 
healthy, rosy-cheeked, and well dressed, and hundreds of 
them ride to and from the factory on bicycles. They 
work eight hours a day, their wages being about eleven 
dollars a week. 


243 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Next to sheep raising, dairying is the great farming 
industry of the Dominion. There are in the two islands 
more than a million dairy cows and heifers and the govern¬ 
ment does everything in its power to encourage the breed¬ 
ing of fine stock and the production of good milk, butter, 
and cheese. It advances money to dairy companies for 
acquiring land and machinery and setting up buildings. 
The loans must be repaid within fifteen years, and the 
rate charged is five per cent. 

There are numerous cooperative butter and cheese fac¬ 
tories to which the farmers take their milk. Here it is 
inspected for its purity and tested for its butter fat. The 
producers are paid on the basis of the fat content, and dirty 
milk is, of course, refused. Some of the plants close for 
three months every year, but many of those in the best 
dairying regions keep going the year round, making either 
butter or cheese as season or market demands. New 
Zealand exports annually in the neighbourhood of twenty- 
five thousand tons of butter and sixty thousand tons of 
cheese, worth approximately sixty-five million dollars. 
Most of this cheese and butter goes, of course, to Great 
Britain, but increasing quantities are being shipped to 
Canada, and in spite of our high tariff, some of it finds a 
market in the United States. 

All meat and dairy products exported from New Zealand 
are inspected and graded by government agents. The 
official standards are so high, and the inspectors have 
done their work so well, that their stamps are accepted 
as absolute guarantees of quality and weight in the markets 
of the world. In fact, New Zealand butter and cheese 
now rank with the output of the famous Danish coopera¬ 
tives. The meat-export trade is entirely controlled by a 
244 


MUTTON AND BUTTER FOR LONDON 


government board, on which the producers themselves 
are represented, and no foreign sales or shipments can 
be made without its approval. It maintains a permanent 
agency in London where the bulk of New Zealand mutton 
is sold. 


245 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


SOME FREAKS OF NATURE 



INDBAD, the Sailor, the bird expert of the Arabian 


Nights, should have come to New Zealand. Here 


he would have found a bird as tall as a giraffe that 


* laid eggs as big as a pumpkin. Sindbad was never 
able to prove that his roc really existed, but if you will 
come out to New Zealand, you can see for yourself re¬ 
mains of its giant bird, the moa. There is a stuffed one at 
Christchurch, besides the skeletons of a dozen others. I 
have examined the real eggs the moa laid when it trod the 
soil of this country a century or so ago. 

The great moa is supposed to be the biggest bird ever 
created. I sat down before the huge model of it in the 
museum at Christchurch and made these notes: "If I 
were to stand under the bird its tail feathers would tickle 
the top of my head. Its ankle is as big around as my calf 
and its gray body is the size of a small haystack. Its tall, 
thin neck is stretched so high above its breast that Bar- 
num’s circus managers would have had a hard time getting 
the animal into a freight car. Its legs are as strong as 
those of a camel, and it looks quite as big as the biggest 
‘ship of the desert.' Its enormous feet have claws much 
like those of a turkey, save that each is a foot long. I 
doubt not the moa could have stamped out the life of a 
man at one kick." Beside one of the skeletons is placed 


246 



Next to the kauri pine,the totara is the most valuable timber tree of 
the Dominion. The country has been denuded of so much of its forests 
that conservation policies have become necessary. 







On the slopes of Mt. Cook near the Tasman Glacier the government 
has established a sanctuary for the kea parrot, which is elsewhere destroyed 
on sight because of its sheep-killing habit. 



SOME FREAKS OF NATURE 


the skeleton of an ordinary man. The head of the bird 
rises at least eight feet above the skull of the man. 

The bones of the moa were first discovered about eighty 
years ago, and later great quantities of them were found. 
The bird existed in New Zealand within a comparatively 
recent period and there are Maoris who say that their 
forefathers knew of it. The probability is that it was 
here long before the Maoris came, and there is no doubt 
that it was once hunted and eaten in great numbers. 
In old ovens that have been excavated bones of cooked 
moa have been found. But as for who the moa hunters 
were and when they lived, no one knows. 

The moa eggs were each about a foot long. One was 
found some years ago by a labourer digging the foundation 
of a house. He had gone down several feet when he came 
upon the skeleton of a man in a sitting posture. The 
egg was held in the skeleton's bony fingers in such a 
manner as to bring it immediately opposite the mouth, 
and it is supposed that it was placed there with the idea 
that the ghost of the dead might have something to eat 
during the intervals of his long sleep. The stone spear 
and axe by the side of the man showed that he was probably 
a warrior, and his skull bore evidence of having received 
several hard knocks, possibly on the battlefield. The 
egg was ten inches long and seven inches in diameter and 
its shell was about as thick as a twenty-five-cent piece. 
It was perfectly empty, but whether time or the dead 
warrior had sucked out the contents the records do not say. 

Though a bird, the moa had no wings. It seems to have 
been a giant edition of some of the strange birds New 
Zealand has now; for there are to-day in the Dominion 
wingless birds not larger than good-sized chickens. I re- 
247 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

fer to the kiwis, some of which I have seen alive here at 
Christchurch. I have had several of them in my hands, 
and by feeling carefully I found what seemed like a little 
lump on each side where the wings ought to be. Some 
say that the kiwi is without wings because the dense 
growth of the New Zealand bush prevented its flights and 
so, through the ages, it lost its wings for lack of use. It 
makes up for this deficiency, however, by its swiftness of 
foot. It runs very fast, with its body held in an oblique 
position and its neck stretched forward. This bird has 
hair-like feathers of somewhat the colour of a quail, and 
a long bill, sharp at the point, with which it can bore down 
into the mud for worms. Its legs are much like those of 
the moa. 

The kiwi is a night bird. At Canterbury College, where 
I saw them, the birds were penned up like chickens and 
had to be brought out of the coop for me to examine them. 
They seemed almost blinded by the light and ran about 
this way and that in apparent terror. Kiwis are becoming 
scarce in New Zealand, for the Maoris are fond of them as 
food, and their feathers are highly prized for cloaks. They 
are now to be found only in the dense beds of ferns cover¬ 
ing parts of New Zealand. It is difficult to catch them, for 
they look much like the dead fern leaves and take refuge 
in crevices in the rocks and in the deep holes that they 
dig in the ground for their nests. They used to be hunted 
With dogs. 

One of the most curious things about this bird is the 
size Of its egg, which is almost as big as the kiwi itself. It 
is a creamy white colour and as smooth and as glossy as 
ivory. 

Another New Zealand bird quite as strange as the kiwi 
248 


SOME FREAKS OF NATURE 


is the kea parrot, which kills sheep. Thousands of sheep 
have been destroyed by these birds, the loss from them 
being so great that the government pays a bounty of one 
dollar a head. As many as fifteen thousand keas have been 
killed in a year, though they are no longer as numerous as 
formerly. The kea has fastidious tastes. It does not 
care for any part of the sheep except the kidneys and the 
fat surrounding them. It has become as expert in anat¬ 
omy as a surgeon and has learned just where the sheep’s 
kidneys lie. I am told that it strikes the right spot every 
time. Fastening its talons into the wool on the animal’s 
back it bores with its bill into the side of the sheep directly 
over the kidneys, making a hole as smooth as though the 
flesh had been cut round with a knife. The kea tears out 
the kidneys and the fat, and then leaves the sheep to die 
in great agony. 

There are different theories as to how keas acquired 
this strange taste. Until sheep were introduced into 
New Zealand the birds had lived on berries and insects. 
Then they began to pick the meat from the sheep skins 
hung up to dry. Later on they attacked the live sheep, 
and after a time, having discovered the kidneys, ignored 
every other part of the animal. Whether the birds talk 
to each other or not I do not know, but they hand on to 
one another as effectively as though they had a language 
their gruesome way of butchering sheep. 

There is one place in the Dominion where the kea’s life 
is safe. This is at the Hermitage, on the sunny slopes of 
Mount Cook, where the government maintains a sanc¬ 
tuary, in order that this parrot may not become entirely 
extinct. The Hermitage is the starting place for those 
who try to scale New Zealand’s loftiest mountain, and 
249 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

some of the people who have stayed there bring back 
stories of the doings of the keas. They are great thieves, 
and one woman tells how her moccasins were stolen from 
the windowsill of her room. Others complain of being 
kept awake at night by the keas squawking and clawing 
up and down on the corrugated-iron roof of the hotel. If 
the birds get hold of a pillow they will tear it all to pieces, 
perhaps thinking that inside the soft substance they will 
find some of the kidney fat they love. 

Kiwis and keas are, however, but a few of the freaks that 
Mother Nature has placed in this out-of-the-way part of 
the world. There are others so strange that I hesitate to 
mention them. In New Zealand there are no kangaroos, 
but there are marsupial rats here, and I saw at the college 
a mouse not much larger than a good-sized cricket with a 
pouch for bringing up its young. This mouse, which is 
one of the smallest marsupials known, is now very rare. 
It is a part of the biological collection of the college 
museum at Christchurch, and was shown me by the chief 
biologist. He showed me also a live lizard, the tuatera, 
which is a descendant of a family of three-eyed lizards. 
The third eye is in the middle of the head and is clearly 
visible through the skin of the young animal, but becomes 
thickly covered when he reaches maturity. The scientists 
say there is little doubt that this eye was once used. The 
lizard I looked at was about a foot long, and, I should say, 
measured two inches in diameter. 

But better than the mother mouse and the three-eyed 
lizard, I liked the black swans of New Zealand. They are 
to be seen in all parts of the islands, and one can shoot 
them anywhere around the lakes. They are even more 
beautiful than the white swans, and as they sail along in 
250 


SOME FREAKS OF NATURE 

the water their feathers look just like black plush. 
Then there are the swamp hens which, with their bright 
blue bodies and red legs, look, as a woman who had been 
in the United States said to me the other day, “like your 
Mystic Shriners on parade.” 

I must not forget to mention the strangest pet any 
country ever had. This was a dolphin, the only whale I 
ever heard of which had its own special act of Parliament. 
When passing through Pelorus Sound on the trip between 
Wellington on the North Island and Nelson on the South 
Island one always hears the story of “Pelorus Jack.” 
He was a big silvery gray fellow, different from all the 
other whales in these waters, and he had a habit of going 
out to meet incoming ships. He would escort them for 
miles and then go back to his own haunts. He would 
play about the vessels and even rub himself against their 
sides, and one theory was that he came to the boats so as to 
rub his back against their keels, and thus rid himself of 
parasites. Another was that he loved playing in the 
waves ruffled up by the ships. 

The fame of “ Pelorus Jack” spread until there were tour¬ 
ist trips into the Sound to see him and Parliament passed 
a law to protect him, for there was always a fear that 
some of the whalers in these waters might kill him. In 
fact, it was said that one ship injured him and that he 
would never meet that steamer again. But at last he 
disappeared. Some hold a party of Norwegian whalers 
responsible for his death, while others believe he was killed 
by one of the mines sowed by a German raider during the 
World War. Perhaps he merely died of old age, for the 
Maoris claim that he was not under two hundred and 
seventy-five years old. Once, it is said, he had a mate, 
251 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

but, if so, he never brought his wife out to greet the tour¬ 
ists. 

New Zealand has some curiosities of vegetable life 
quite as remarkable as those of her animal world. One 
of the strangest is what is known as the vegetable cater¬ 
pillar. This looks like a real caterpillar, two inches long, 
with a sprout, like a horn, growing out of its head. When 
it is full grown the sprout comes out and takes root and 
becomes a vigorous plant about eight inches tall, with 
a single stem, but no leaf. The only one I have seen was 
a plant that had been dried after being taken out of the 
ground. 

I might also speak of New Zealand flax, which I have 
seen at many places on the islands. This flax, which 
grows wild and on swamp lands, has thick blades about 
two inches wide and five or six feet long. In the middle 
of the clustered blades grows the tall, straight flax stick 
with seed pods at the top. The upstanding New Zealand 
men are often called ‘'flax sticks/' When the blades are 
harvested, at intervals of three years, the green covering 
is stripped from them, leaving the fibre exposed. This is 
washed, hung up to bleach, and then made into tow and 
cordage. It competes successfully with the hemp of 
Manila, and thousands of tons are exported every year. 
Of late years the flax fields have suffered from a small 
fly which makes holes in the leaves and so reduces the 
quantity of good fibre. Since it has been found that 
drained swamp lands make the richest dairy farms, it is a 
question whether it is best to drain them for cattle runs 
or leave them to produce flax. 

A product almost as valuable as flax in the export trade 
of the Dominion is kauri gum. It is a solidified turpen- 
252 


SOME FREAKS OF NATURE 


tine, or fossil resin, which is found in great chunks in the 
ground in the North Island. The lumps may be the 
size of a walnut or as big as a man's head, and single pieces 
have been found weighing as much as one hundred pounds. 
It is often as clear as amber, but varies greatly in colour. 
Sometimes it is a rich yellow, sometimes brown, and some¬ 
times just the colour of champagne. Some of the best of 
it is sold to the manufacturers of varnish and linoleums, 
the bulk of it being sent to the United States. Kauri 
gum is by no means a cheap article, selling for more than 
four hundred and fifty dollars a ton, and the annual ex¬ 
port is worth nearly two million dollars. 

Hundreds of men go over the kauri forests with spears 
and picks looking for this gum. They drive their spears 
down into the earth and when they strike a piece, dig it 
out. The gum lies within a limited area, consisting of 
about seven hundred thousand acres north of Auckland 
and about thirty thousand acres southeast of that city. 
Part of this is government land, upon which the right to 
dig kauri is sold at so much a year. 

Most of the diggers are Austrians, but some are 
Maoris and some English-Australian settlers. The Aus¬ 
trians make a regular business of hunting kauri and 
work in bands of thirty or more. The settlers dig for the 
gum when they are not farming, and the Maoris seek it to 
supplement their funds when food runs low. Many of 
the Austrian gum diggers make more than twenty-five 
dollars a week. 

This gum appears on the kauri pine, a tree that often 
grows one hundred and fifty feet high and twelve feet in 
diameter. The kauri is about the best timber of New 
Zealand, and is used largely in building and furniture 
253 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

making. The gum comes from the great forests of the 
past which have rotted away. Some of the standing 
kauri trees are bled for their resin like our turpentine 
forests of the southern states, but this method is illegal, 
and most of the product is still obtained from the de¬ 
posits in the ground. 

Kauri gum is used by the varnish and linoleum manu¬ 
facturers because it assimilates oil easily and at low tem¬ 
peratures. As the New Zealand deposits are worked from 
year to year the gum gets more and more expensive and 
in anticipation of their giving out the question of substi¬ 
tutes has been studied. China-wood oil, extracted from 
nuts, and exported from Hankow, China, is now being 
extensively used and has become a keen competitor of 
kauri. 


254 



Kauri gum is the fossilized resin of the kauri pine forests of the past. 
It is dug from the ground, and most of it is exported to the United States 
to be used in the manufacture of varnish and linoleum. 







We call a tall, straight person a “bean pole,” but the New Zealanders 
say he is a “flax stick,” borrowing their comparison from the seed-bearing 
stalk that rises from the centre of the native flax. 







CHAPTER XXXV 


AMERICAN GOODS IN NEW ZEALAND 

I N THE foregoing chapters I have mentioned two 
facts that should mean much to the exporters of the 
United States. One is that New Zealand is an 
agricultural country, exporting raw materials and 
importing manufactured articles, and the other is that the 
per-capita wealth of all persons of more than twenty 
years of age is about four thousand dollars. In other 
words, New Zealand is dependent on foreign markets as 
outlets for her rich agricultural production, and on foreign 
factories to supply her needs for finished goods, and she 
has the money to pay for what she wants. The total 
foreign trade, imports and exports, comes to more than 
four hundred dollars a year for every one of her people. 
This, the New Zealanders claim, is the highest per-capita 
foreign trade in the world. In some years half the amount 
has been spent for goods brought in from other countries. 

In travelling here one sees everywhere evidences of 
prosperity and a high level of comfort. The people are 
well dressed and live in modern, well-built houses. Unlike 
Australia, New Zealand has a big rural population, and 
about half the inhabitants live out on the land or in coun¬ 
try villages. There are only four cities of any size, but 
there are a hundred towns of one or two thousand, and 
perhaps a dozen ranging between two and ten thousand. 
All are up to date in their conveniences and equipment. 
255 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

The New Zealand cities have their theatres, libraries, 
and stores, their banks and their factories. Each has its 
cricket club and its recreation grounds, and the people 
devote a large part of their time to amusements and sports. 
The short working day gives leisure to the wage earners. 
They leave their jobs in time to dress for the evening, 
and take their families to the movies, where they often see 
American films. During the half holiday they spend more 
money than if they were at work. 

In proportion to its population, Auckland, the com¬ 
mercial metropolis, has more rich men than any other 
city in New Zealand, although Wellington, the capital, is 
growing the fastest. On the South Island, the largest 
city is Christchurch. It is on the famous Canterbury 
Plains, “The Garden Spot of New Zealand.” South of it 
is Dunedin, with a population of sixty thousand. Christ¬ 
church and Dunedin are rival towns, the feeling between 
the people of the two places being much the same as 
that between the populations of Minneapolis and St. 
Paul. Christchurch was founded by a group of Church 
of England settlers, who gave it its religious name. 
Dunedin was started by Scotch Presbyterians at about 
the same time, and in its early days it was by no means 
safe to question election, justification, sanctification, or 
infant damnation within its precincts. The Scotch col¬ 
onists wanted to name this settlement after their capital 
at home. But there were so many Edinburghs in the 
world that they decided on the Celtic name for Edinburgh 
and called the place Dunedin. 

To-day nine tenths of the people of Dunedin are of 
Scotch descent and the place is a magnet for Scottish im¬ 
migrants. There are Scotch names over the stores, Scotch 
256 


AMERICAN GOODS IN NEW ZEALAND 

names for the streets, and the little stream that runs 
through the north end of the town is called the Water of 
Leith. When I asked a rosy-faced boy the name of one 
of the churches, he replied with a thick brogue: 

“That, sor, is the Fierst Kirk.” 

The Dunedin men say that their churches are far better 
off than those of the rival city. They are all out of debt 
and have money in the bank. When the city was founded 
one tenth of all the land was set aside for the Church. 
This is leased out for twenty-one years at a time, on con¬ 
dition that at the close of each such lease all improve¬ 
ments made shall belong to the Church. 

Dunedin is in the rich Otago Province, which irrigation 
has made into a great fruit-producing region. Grapes, 
peaches, pears, nectarines, and several kinds of nuts are 
raised in abundance. For a time the industry suffered 
from the great numbers of birds, but the importation of 
the German owl, which killed off most of them, solved 
that difficulty. Dairying and sheep raising are carried 
on almost as extensively as on the Canterbury Plains, and 
the farmers raise four good crops of alfalfa in a year. 

There are four big woollen mills in the neighbourhood of 
Dunedin and here also is one of the car shops of the govern¬ 
ment railways. Another local industry is the freezing 
of thousands of rabbits for export. 

Our trade with New Zealand is rapidly increasing. 
Every year we sell her goods valued at nearly forty million 
dollars,or more than eighteen per cent.of the total imports. 
Great Britain has the bulk of the trade, but the United 
States comes next, and then Australia. There is no doubt 
that we might double our share if we tried hard enough. 
I have met a number of American salesmen, all of whom 
257 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

say that they are doing well. They are, however, some¬ 
what handicapped by the bad impression created by that 
class of our commercial travellers who are for ever brag¬ 
ging of their country and over-praising their goods. This 
is particularly distasteful to all New Zealanders and 
especially so to the business man. On the whole, however, 
the people like our goods and are friendly to the Yankees, 
as they call us. 

Take, for instance, a salesman I met the other night 
in the chief hotel at Dunedin. He has been selling goods 
here and in other parts of Australasia during the past 
five years. Said he: 

“ American goods are fast making their way in this 
part of the world. I am the agent for several large com¬ 
panies and am doing well. We are selling printing paper 
by the ton. There is a good demand for farming machinery 
of all kinds, and tens of thousands of acres of sheep pas¬ 
tures are enclosed in fences of American wire. Our 
automobiles are the most popular and the country is 
alive with 'flivvers/ The New Zealanders bought ten 
million dollars’ worth of our cars in a single year, to say 
nothing of four million dollars’ worth of tires. They 
have spent as much again on our gasoline and oils. Ameri¬ 
can bicycles are sold everywhere, and in spite of their 
higher prices our carpenter’s tools are preferred to those 
of Europe. Recently I took a big order for steel rails. 
We have also a good business in electrical supplies.” 

The government is undertaking to develop New Zea¬ 
land’s water power. It has picked out no less than 
seventy-two sites for hydro-electric projects, and it has a 
big programme under way. The Lake Coleridge plant, 
seventy miles from Christchurch, serves a population of 
258 



As in every other country where modern farming methods prevail, 
American agricultural machinery is much used in New Zealand. So also 
are our automobiles, tires, and small tools. 













Among the many good dairy herds of the Dominion, Ayrshires, 
Jerseys, and Holsteins are the favourite breeds. Tons of the finest cheese 
and butter are annually exported. 



Refrigerator ships, sailing overseas with New Zealand’s frozen mutton, 
have revolutionized her farming. Instead of being raised on wild grasses 
for wool and tallow, as formerly, the sheep are now fattened on culti¬ 
vated forage crops. 








AMERICAN GOODS IN NEW ZEALAND 


more than one hundred thousand, and enables Christ¬ 
church to have a two-cent fare on its municipally owned 
street-car lines. The Waikato plant, seventeen miles 
from the town of Cambridge in the North Island, can 
generate eighty-four hundred horsepower; and the Wai- 
pori Falls project furnishes eighty thousand horsepower 
for the city and the factories of Dunedin. Extensions of 
these three plants are being pushed, and the government 
has plans for other installations which will give electric 
energy to practically all the towns and rural districts of 
the North Island. Such projects should mean more 
business for the electrical-supply firms of the United 
States. 

Our firms are selling Connecticut clocks, Illinois farm 
machinery, and Massachusetts watches. I saw American 
typewriters in Wellington. There is a good market for 
all sorts of Yankee notions. The other day while riding 
on a train with a New Zealand merchant, I asked him 
what he thought of American goods. Pulling his right 
foot from under his travelling rug, he put it up on the 
seat beside me. 

“ You see those shoes ?” said he. “They are American. 
They are the easiest shoes I have ever had on. They have 
not troubled me a day since I bought them.” 

The New Zealand government is one of the chief cus¬ 
tomers for manufactured goods. It owns the railroads, 
builds bridges, and operates coal mines. Hence, its pur¬ 
chases are enormous. It buys all sorts of iron and steel 
building materials, as well as hardware, galvanized roof¬ 
ing, elevators, irrigation pumps, and all kinds of machinery 
and engineering apparatus. 

We now have the best consular service of any corn- 
259 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

mercial nation, and New Zealand offers a splendid field for 
its operations. Times have changed both in this Domin¬ 
ion and in Australia, since the day typified by the young 
man who got himself appointed consul at Melbourne. 
His only business experience had been as postmaster in his 
little home town in Wisconsin. He was asked by an 
American why he did not keep the State Department 
posted on the openings for American trade, and on the 
big business developments going on everywhere. He 
replied that he reported upon all things that the depart¬ 
ment directly asked for, but that he did not consider it best 
to advertise the great trade opportunities of Australia for 
fear it might call them to the attention of other nations, 
i New Zealand buyers give to British firms as many orders 
as they can, without too great a sacrifice of their own in¬ 
terests. This is especially true since the World War, 
as the people are anxious to do what they can to stimulate 
British trade and thus help the mother country pay her 
enormous debt and regain prosperity. 1 find here a 
strong love for Old England. Many New Zealanders, 
even those born and bred here, speak of a trip there as 
going “home/’ and of British articles as goods “made at 
home.” The Dominion appears entirely content under 
the British Crown, doubtless because the bonds binding 
her are not tight. For example, in the World War, Great 
Britain could not have conscripted soldiers from the 
Dominion as France did from Algeria. It was the people 
themselves who decided in favour of compulsory military 
service, though not until many thousands of young men 
had already volunteered and gone overseas. In Aus¬ 
tralia, conscription was defeated by the voters of the Com¬ 
monwealth. 


260 


AMERICAN GOODS IN NEW ZEALAND 


I recently visited Invercargill, the town farthest south 
on this side of the world. It is the bottom city of the 
Pacific, far below the latitude of Cape Town, at the tip 
of Africa, and almost as far south as Punta Arenas at the 
tail of South America. It is at the extreme south of New 
Zealand, and as nice a little city of fifteen thousand people 
as you will find anywhere. The town is as well built as 
any of the same size in the United States. It has water 
works, good schools, a public library, and a beautiful park, 
upon the waters of which swim half-a-dozen jet-black 
swans. 

Walking through the streets, I stopped at an agricul¬ 
tural implement store. It was filled with farming ma¬ 
chinery, and I noticed that at least half of the stock was 
American. There were several Chicago drills, two Ohio 
harvesters, and some Illinois ploughs. I talked with the 
proprietor. He said he had a good sale for American 
reapers, and all sorts of American farming tools, but that 
the British and Canadians are trying to crowd us out of 
the market. Said he: 

"One of your chief competitors is Canada. The Cana¬ 
dian firms will sell on longer time, and we can get better 
prices for their goods on that account. We have to give a 
discount for cash, and cash sales are much harder to 
make/' 

On the same street I saw American bicycles in a shop 
window, and farther up, American handsaws. At present 
most of the cottons sold here come from England, but the 
people are beginning to buy our print goods. I saw some 
in a Wellington dry-goods store and asked the merchant 
where he got them. He replied that he had given an 
American firm a trial order, and that they were selling 
261 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

well. He showed me his invoice. It was for eight thousand 
dollars, and this he called a trial order. Most firms in the 
United States would consider it a pretty good one. But 
this part of the world is so far away that the merchants 
must buy a whole season's stock in one consignment. 
And there is no chance for a re-order. 


262 



Coconuts are common to all the islands of the South Seas, and provide 
the chief source of income. Niuafoou, an outlying island of the Tongas, 
is said to grow the largest in the world. 









Rubber growing is proving profitable in the Fijis, and nurseries have 
been established for raising the young trees. The Fijian’s inborn dislike 
of work has often made it necessary to import labour for the plantations. 









CHAPTER XXXVI 

THE FIJIS AND THE TONGAS 

T HE ports of Australia and New Zealand swarm 
with sea captains, traders, and others, who know 
the South Seas as you know the palm of your 
hand. The Canadian Pacific steamers plying 
between Vancouver and Sydney by way of Hawaii call 
at the Fijis, and the Tongas are easily reached from Auck¬ 
land, New Zealand. During my stay in these waters 
I have had the many talks about these far-away islands 
that form the basis of what follows. 

I have spoken of the Tongas as being easily reached from 
New Zealand. This seems a strange statement when I 
tell you they are about as far from Auckland as New 
York is from Cuba. Distances mean little in the South 
Seas, however. The Fijis are eleven hundred miles from 
Auckland and the Tongas are only a few hundred miles 
nearer, yet New Zealand once wanted them put under its 
government. The idea was to establish here a British 
Island Empire which should be two thousand miles in 
length, or longer than the distance from Canada to the 
Gulf of Mexico. The project fell through, and the two 
archipelagoes are still crown colonies, the Tongas being 
under the British High Commissioner for the Western 
Pacific, who is also Governor of the Fijis. 

There are men still living who can tell stories of the days 
when the Fijians were the most bloodthirsty cannibals on 
263 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

earth. They made human sacrifices, and widows were 
burned on the funeral pyres of their husbands. When a 
chief built a home he planted a living victim under each 
post, and when his canoes were launched he used men as 
rollers upon which the craft slid down into the sea. When 
he died his wives were strangled to line his grave; such a 
thing as killing a baby was too common for notice. 

The last king of the Fijis, Thakombau, was the son of 
Tanoa, a notorious man eater. Thakombau himself was 
something of a cannibal, but his father craved human 
flesh as a matinee maiden craves candy. He sent his war 
canoes about the South Sea Islands for victims, and they 
often brought back cargoes of dead men, women, and 
even babies. Upon their return everyone joined in a 
feast of human flesh. 

One can still see on the islands the ovens in which the 
cooking was done. They were filled with red-hot stones, 
and it is related by the missionaries that victims were often 
roasted alive. At one time fifty bodies were cooked, 
and at another eighty women were strangled for a single 
feast. Whenever the stock of dead enemies ran low, the 
king used to send his men to the watering places to lie in 
ambush for fishermen or for women who had gone down 
to bathe. 

King Thakombau killed his first victim when he was 
six years old, and he was famous as a cannibal until the 
time of his conversion by the missionaries. It was after 
he reformed that he made the treaty which gave these 
islands to England. The story of this treaty is interest¬ 
ing. The home of a white trader named Williams, who 
was acting as United States consul to Fiji, was burned, 
and the natives stole some of the furniture and stores while 
264 


THE FIJIS AND THE TONGAS 

the house was ablaze. Williams demanded three thousand 
dollars damages. The Fijian king refused. Then Williams 
got the backing of the United States government, and 
finally the sum of forty-five thousand dollars was de¬ 
manded. It was out of the question for the savage king 
and his subjects to raise this sum, so when certain money¬ 
lenders of Australia offered to settle the claim in return 
for two hundred thousand acres of his best land, Thak- 
ombau joyfully accepted. But the British government 
would not permit this transaction. Thereupon Thak- 
ombau agreed to cede the Fijis to Great Britain if she 
would pay the debt. A commission visited the islands 
and reported adversely on the proposal, but in 1874, con¬ 
vinced that the islands needed the rule of a civilized power, 
the British made a treaty with Thakombau annexing his 
whole domain. Meantime, the claim of the United 
States had been allowed to drop during our Civil War, and 
was never revived. 

Though no longer master of the Fijis after the British 
took possession, Thakombau continued to live in royal 
state. At his death his mantle fell to his son, the high 
chief Ratu Epele Nailatikau, who kept up all the show of 
royalty. He possessed no real power, but he made the 
natives treat him with the most abject respect. Only 
the highest chiefs were permitted to enter his house at 
Mbau, and even they must crouch silently against the 
wall and await his invitation to speak. Whenever he was 
through smoking a cigar, he would indicate by a nod which 
chief might have the honour of finishing the butt. A new 
clean mat was unrolled for his dinner table about which 
crept the men and women who bore him food. No 
commoner was allowed to eat in his presence. 

265 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

Canoes loaded down with yams, coconuts, turtles, and 
yaqona root for making the native drink, kava, were 
constantly landing at Mbau. The offerings were carried 
humbly to the door of Ratu Epele and the natives crouched 
outside, gently clapping their hands, until their tributes 
were graciously accepted. In the days of his grandfather, 
Tanoa, any island that failed to furnish the expected trib¬ 
ute was frightfully punished. When the people of the 
island of Maliki, designated to provide turtles for the 
king, so far forgot themselves as to eat some of their 
catch, Tanoa sent a fleet of war canoes. Every man and 
woman on the island was killed, while the children were 
taken captive to Mbau so that the boys there might earn 
their titles as killers of men by clubbing them to death. 

The Fijians of to-day are among the most civilized of 
all the South Sea Islanders. They have been converted 
to Christianity and have their own native preachers. 
They are divided among a half-dozen denominations, with 
the Methodists claiming the largest number of converts. 
The oldest established church in the islands is that of 
the Methodist mission founded in 1825. 

The missionaries established the first schools in the 
Fijis and until a few years ago the education of the 
natives was left entirely to the Methodists and the Catho¬ 
lics. The government now maintains a high school 
near the town of Suva, where the sons of chiefs are 
trained, and it also helps other schools that comply with 
its requirements. At an industrial school near Suva the 
islanders are taught boat building, iron working, and 
other manual arts. Boys are entered for terms of five 
years. Children of European residents are educated at 
government expense in separate institutions. 

266 


THE FIJIS AND THE TONGAS 

The Fiji Islands were discovered in 1643 by Tasman, 
the Dutch navigator, the same man who discovered Tas¬ 
mania and New Zealand. Their area is less than that of 
New Jersey, and their total population is little more than 
that of Dayton, Ohio. Only about half the people are 
native Fijians. For some years their number decreased 
steadily, but this decline seems now to have been checked. 
The people are especially subject to epidemics. In 1875 
measles was brought into the islands by sailors from a 
British ship. The disease took a most virulent form and 
killed forty thousand natives in a short time. Great 
numbers of them died when influenza swept the world in 
1917 and 1918. 

The Fijians are strong and well built, and in appearance 
far superior to our American Indians. They have dark 
copper skins and frizzly hair, which stands up about their 
heads in enormous mops, making them seem tall. In 
order to get their hair to stick up, they plaster it with 
damp lime, which bleaches it to an auburn shade, so that 
they look very grotesque. When young, the women are 
handsome, having pretty eyes and well-moulded faces. 
In the settled regions they wear loose cotton gowns, but 
back in the interior the usual attire is a fringe of grass 
about the waist, a string of beads, and a fan. The men 
wear about the same costume. 

One frequently sees a native with a long pin, or 
scratcher, thrust through his hair. This weapon is used to 
make war upon the vermin with which almost every head 
is infested. Sometimes the irritation gets beyond the 
scratching point, and in desperation the man so attacked 
kindles a fire of banana leaves and, lying down with his 
head near the fire, thus smokes out his unwelcome visitors* 
267 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

The Fijians are good-natured. They are cleanly and 
spend a great part of their time in the water. After every 
bath they rub themselves down with coconut oil, the rancid 
odour of which enables one to smell a native long before 
seeing him. 

Though they are practically all Christians, the natives 
cling stubbornly to many of their old customs. One of 
these is the performance of the fire walkers. On the 
island of Beqa is a circular pit about twenty feet in diam¬ 
eter. The bottom is lined with volcanic stones and when 
a fire walk is to be staged the pit is filled with dry sticks 
and a fire is kept up until the stones are red hot. Then 
the glowing coals are brushed aside and out of the forest 
comes a procession of young men, their bodies gleaming 
with coconut oil and garlanded with flowers. Slowly 
they tread over the hot stones, singing as they go. Then 
they vanish into the dense woods, apparently unhurt. 
After they have gone, whole pigs and vegetables are put 
on the hot stones and covered with leaves and earth. 
Soon a well-cooked feast is ready for both spectators and 
performers. Scientists say that the volcanic stones 
used are poor heat conductors and that they radiate heat 
quickly. Thus the surface cools sufficiently to permit 
the fire walkers to tread the stones, though they retain 
enough heat inside to cook the feast. At any rate, 
nothing will persuade the fire walkers to step on hot lime¬ 
stone, which is a good conductor and a poor radiator. 
The thickness of the skin on the soles of the natives' un¬ 
shod feet no doubt accounts in great measure for the 
"miracle." 

Many natives live in and about Suva and Levuka, the 
principal towns, but most of them dwell in villages scat- 
268 


THE FIJIS AND THE TONGAS 

tered over the islands. A Fiji village consists almost en¬ 
tirely of thatched huts with walls of woven bamboo built 
without the use of nails. The roofs are thick and the 
thatch is so skilfully put on that it seems to be woven. 
Some of the houses are conical in shape, others oblong, 
and others oval. The usual hut has but one room, in 
which the whole family stays in the daytime, when it 
rains, and where all sleep at night. The bed is a mat on 
the floor, and the pillow a bamboo log, which is placed 
under the neck in order to keep the sleeper’s headdress 
well up from the ground. There is but little cooking, 
as raw fruit forms a large part of the diet of the people. 

The chief ports of the Fijis, Suva and Levuka, have 
steamship service to Sydney, Auckland, the Tongas, and 
the Samoa Islands. An excursion to Suva, which is 
also the capital, is a popular winter trip for New Zea¬ 
landers. Besides the natives, about a thousand Euro¬ 
peans live there, most of them in well-built modern houses. 
Its chief street, the Victoria Parade, is lined on one side 
with rain trees whose thick foliage protects one from the 
sun, and on the other side with hotels and business houses. 
The British governor has his office at Suva. He lives 
there like a little king in a palace that cost about a hun¬ 
dred thousand dollars. 

The Governor of the Fijis is appointed by the King of 
England, and gets a salary of fifteen thousand dollars a 
year, besides the five thousand he is paid as High Com¬ 
missioner of the Western Pacific. He has a sort of cabinet, 
or executive council. The laws for the islands are made 
by a legislative council, of which he is president. There 
are a large number of district chiefs and native magis¬ 
trates, and seven of the provinces have resident super- 
269 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

visors to assist the chiefs. In ordinary matters the 
native laws and customs are respected as far as possible. 
There is a constabulary of Fijians and East Indians, be¬ 
sides the defence force, which is composed of Europeans, 
half-castes, and natives. 

Most of the money made in the Fijis comes from sugar 
plantations and coconut groves. Upon the higher por¬ 
tions of the islands coffee is now being grown, and yields 
about five hundred pounds to the acre. A large number 
of tea gardens have been set out, and some planters are 
making money from rubber. 

Each coconut tree has an average yield of a hundred 
nuts per annum, and brings in about a dollar per year net. 
At this rate, a grove of ten thousand trees will mean ten 
thousand dollars a year, and as the trees are set close to¬ 
gether ten thousand do not take up any great area. After 
the trees are once planted, little needs to be done until 
they begin to bear at the end of from five to seven years. 
The nuts are broken open and the meat is cut up and 
dried, to be shipped abroad as copra, for use in making 
soaps, hair restorers, and “nut” butter. 

Nearly all the profitable enterprises in the islands are 
owned or backed by Englishmen. The chief difficulty 
that confronts them is the labour problem. Having few 
wants and being blessed by nature with the means of 
supplying them without much trouble, the Fijians feel 
no need to work. Sustained effort they abhor, although 
in their own way they are industrious, and are the best 
native carpenters and canoe builders in the South Seas. 

It was just a year after the British took over the islands 
that the measles epidemic decimated the population, so 
that, what with the decreased number of the Fijians and 
270 



Though the largest island in the Samoan group, Savii has few in¬ 
habitants. It is volcanic and parts of it are often enveloped in clouds of 
steam caused by boiling lava rushing down into the sea. 













The native church at Apia is well attended, the Samoans being fond of 
religious ceremonies. Most families also hold daily prayer services in their 
hotnes. 



At mission schools natives are trained in wood-working and boat¬ 
building, but the islanders as a rule are not industrious and work only 
enough to supply their simple needs. 









THE FIJIS AND THE TONGAS 

the natives' distaste for work, the plantation owners had 
to import labourers. Workers were brought in from I ndia, 
the Solomon Islands, the Gilberts, and the New Hebrides. 

The government regulated the employment of imported 
labour. It cost about seventy-five dollars to bring in a 
native from the New Hebrides, and forty dollars to get 
one from the Gilberts, and the employer had to agree to 
return the labourers at his own expense at the close of their 
engagement. It cost more to import the East Indians, 
but they were usually hired for terms of five years, on the 
understanding that they should have food free for six 
months after their arrival, and free lodgings and medical 
care for the whole term. Their wages were paid weekly, 
the men receiving twenty-five cents a day and the women 
eighteen cents. 

More and more coolies were imported from India, while 
the numbers brought from other islands fell off. At the 
close of their terms of service many of the East Indians 
took up little plantations of their own, where they grew 
rice, sugar, coconuts, and bananas. There are now up¬ 
ward of sixty thousand of them in the islands, compared 
with about ninety thousand Fijians, five thousand Euro¬ 
peans, and a sprinkling of half-castes, Polynesians, and 
Chinese. As in other British colonies to which they have 
been admitted, the East Indians have bred a serious race 
problem, and their further importation has been stopped. 
They declare themselves as good as the whites and demand 
equal rights with them. A few years ago half the Indian 
population went on a strike, which reached such a climax 
of violence that it had to be put down with military force. 

Eighty per cent, of the trade of the Fijis is with Aus¬ 
tralia and New Zealand, and the total amounts to about 
271 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

twenty-two million dollars a year. Some of the imports 
come from the United States. We supply them with 
timber, oil, hardware, and cheap clocks and watches. 
The Fijian will use none but an American axe, which he 
likes because it is light, sharp, and well tempered. He 
likes also American-made knives or machetes, with blades 
about fifteen inches long, with which he clears his fields 
and gathers his bananas and coconuts. The people buy 
about one and a half million dollars’ worth of cottons 
yearly and there is a demand for canned meats and flour. 

As High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, the 
British governor of the Fijis looks after the Tongas, which 
lie about two hundred miles southeast of the nearest of the 
Fijis. They still have a native ruler, Salote, the Queen 
of the Tongans, who handles native matters through her 
high chiefs. The government is, in fact, a sort of heredi¬ 
tary monarchy under the British crown. 

The Tongas have a total area about one tenth that of 
Connecticut. The largest of them is only twenty miles 
long, and many are little more than atolls and coral 
rocks rising out of the sea. Some of them are volcanic, 
but their soil is well suited to growing coconuts and sugar. 
The entire population would hardly make a city of twenty- 
five thousand inhabitants, and there is only one town, 
Nukualofa, the capital. It has a race track and cricket 
grounds, and claims some of the finest motor roads south 
of the Equator. 


272 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


THE SAMOAS 

I N COMING from the Fijis to Apia, the capital of 
Western Samoa, our ship crossed the date line, and 
when we sailed over the 180th meridian, east longitude, 
we went from one day into the day before. I felt some 
satisfaction in getting back one of the many days I have 
lost in going across the Pacific in the opposite direction. 

It was delightful sailing along the Equator. We had 
nothing but sunshine, and such glorious sunshine! As we 
coasted the island of Savaii, the largest of the Samoan 
group, the air was fresh and the wind strong enough to 
make it cool and pleasant. The sea was steel blue, with 
silvery whitecaps dancing upon it, between us and the 
shore, and the sky was full of white, smoky clouds. 

The volcanic island of Savaii in its thick cloak of ver¬ 
dure makes one think of the Hawaiian Islands. As we 
passed along its shores it seemed a great hill shaped like 
a horseshoe, with the ends of the shoe sloping down to the 
water. 

Going on we soon reached Upolu, on the north coast of 
which Apia is situated. Both Upolu and Savaii now be¬ 
long to the Territory of Western Samoa, which has been 
created from what was formerly German Samoa and is 
now administered by New Zealand under a mandate from 
the League of Nations. The United States owns Tutuila, 
Manua, and some of the smaller islands of the group. 

273 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

When Germany and the United States came to their 
agreement about the division of the Samoas in 1899, the 
Germans, in their greed for land, were glad to take the 
two biggest islands. But out here it is thought that we 
got the best of the bargain. Both Savaii and Upolu to¬ 
gether are not so large as Rhode Island, and much of 
Savaii has been so recently subject to volcanic action as to 
be unfit for cultivation. Savaii is forty-eight miles long 
and twenty-five miles wide, and Upolu is a good deal 
smaller. Both islands are mountainous and well watered. 
Like Tutuila, they have been built up by volcanoes and 
are for the most part surrounded by coral reefs. 

As I came into the harbour of Apia the tide was low, 
and I could see a great garden of coral rising out of the 
water. Here and there along the shore were groves of 
coconut trees, and, farther up the mountains, plantations of 
cacao. Amid the green jungle on the hills I noticed 
patches of chocolate brown, where the ground had been 
cleared for cacao plantations. Just back of Apia gleamed 
the white villa where Robert Louis Stevenson lived, and 
above it rose mountain after mountain of different shades 
of green or blue, covered with vegetation and canopied by 
masses of fleecy clouds. Here the shadows turned the sea 
to green, and there to navy blue, while upon the land 
they made a mass of light and dark patches of velvet 
on the green crops and the still deeper green forest. 
Close to the water’s edge were what from our steamer 
looked like vast cornfields. These the captain said were 
coconut orchards, containing tens of thousands of trees 
loaded with millions of nuts. 

I am disappointed in Apia. From Robert Louis Steven¬ 
son’s letters and the place it once held in international 
274 



As they grow older the Samoan girls lose their beautiful figures but 
never part with their sweet dispositions and their love for ornaments and 
flowers. The women marry in their ’teens, and large families are the rule. 





The chief product and export of Samoa is copra, the meat of the coco¬ 
nut. Dried and packed in sacks, it is shipped abroad for use in making 
soaps, toilet preparations, and “nut” butters. 





THE SAMOAS 

affairs I had expected to find it a large city. It is 
really a small town with a foreign population of less 
than five hundred British, Germans, New Zealanders, and 
Swedes, with a few Americans and French for good meas¬ 
ure. Its buildings are bungalows, with roofs of galva¬ 
nized iron, strung around the harbour. 

Our steamer was greeted by a great crowd of Samoans 
and the whole population of foreigners, through which 1 
went up to the Tivoli Hotel, my headquarters during 
my stay. It did not take me long to exhaust the sights of 
Apia. The town has a half-dozen business houses engaged 
in shipping cacao and copra and in furnishing the natives 
with different kinds of fancy goods, cottons, and tinned 
stuffs. There are also two photographers, a number of 
consuls, and a baker’s dozen or so of government officials. 

My guide over the island of Upolu was one of the 
Samoan chiefs. He was half naked when I came into his 
house, a kind of thatched shack not far from Apia, but he 
dressed himself in my presence and went about with me. 
I found that he spoke good English, knew the islands well, 
and was very intelligent, as are all the natives I have so far 
met. 

With him I visited many of the native houses. Owing 
to the hot climate, the Samoan dwelling is scarcely more 
than a roof made of plaited branches supported on a num¬ 
ber of slender posts through which all the airs of heaven 
may circulate. The walls are mats of fibre which are 
rolled up inside and against the roof when not in use, and 
which may be let down to keep out the wind and rain. 
Not a nail is used in the construction of such a house, but 
instead the parts are tied together with yards of plaited 
coconut fibre called cinnet. The men spend much of 
275 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

their leisure time plaiting cinnet, some of which is as fine 
as twine. 

The floor of the typical hut is a circular terrace raised 
about two feet above the ground and surrounded by a 
shallow ditch. The terrace is made of stones closely 
fitted together, and over it is spread a layer of white coral 
pebbles gathered from the beach to form the carpet for the 
hut. The pebbles, which serve for mattresses as well as 
floor covering, are sometimes known as “Samoan feathers/' 
When the native is ready for bed he simply lays a fibre or 
grass mat upon them, takes down his pillow from the raf¬ 
ters, crawls under his mosquito net, and goes off to the 
Land of Nod. His pillow is no more than a little log set 
on four short legs so as to raise his head well off the 
floor. 

The Samoans have always been noted for their hospital¬ 
ity. They give all strangers a cordial welcome, and food, 
lodging, and even clothing may be had in any native house 
without thought of compensation. Nevertheless, when a 
white visitor stays in a Samoan home he gives presents on 
leaving to the full value of his entertainment. No native 
guest ever does this, but the foreigners have been so liberal 
in the past that they have led the people to expect gifts. 
No Samoan host would, however, lower himself so greatly 
as to take money. In almost every settlement there is a 
“Taupo,” or “Maid of the Village," elected by the people 
to receive guests and take a leading part in all public cere¬ 
monies and festivals. When she goes any distance from 
home the maiden is surrounded by a train of elderly 
women as chaperons. She holds office for a few years, 
or until she is married. 

The Samoans are a clean people. Everywhere I see 
276 


THE SAMOAS 

them in bathing. The women and the men wade about 
waist-deep in the streams and swim together in the surf, 
splashing one another, and acting more like children than 
grown-ups. 

The young women have beautiful forms. They are as 
straight as the statue of Venus in the Capitoline Museum 
at Rome, and as plump and as well formed as the Venus de’ 
Medici. Their complexions are of a rich chestnut brown 
and their large soulful eyes are full of smiles. Unfortu¬ 
nately they often bleach their black hair to a bright red by 
the use of lime. Both women and men are good-natured, 
gentle, kind, and easily governed. 

I have been asked to investigate the chances for Ameri¬ 
cans to get rich in the Samoan Islands. Robert Louis 
Stevenson made about twenty thousand dollars a year out 
of his books, but as far as I can learn, for all his sweating 
on his cacao plantation, he did not get a cent out of it. 
The islands have an excellent climate. It is good for 
consumptives, and if the consumptive were anything else 
than an impractical newspaper or literary man he might 
prosper at coconut raising or in growing cacao. There are 
cacao planters on Upolu who are making money. 

Cacao plants produce the seeds from which chocolate is 
made. The trees are planted in rows about fourteen feet 
apart and it is four years before they come into bearing. 
After that time, if properly cared for, they are profitable. 
One Samoan planter has recently netted more than twelve 
hundred dollars a year from sixty acres, and there are 
others who are doing equally well. 

This man has three thousand trees planted at Pago Pago 
and expects to set out more. Another planter I have 
heard of got nine hundred dollars a year from less than 
277 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

eight acres of cacao in American Samoa. It is estimated 
that two thirds of all the land in the Samoan Islands is 
suitable for the growing of cacao. As to coconuts, there 
is money to be made in raising them on almost any of the 
Pacific islands. 

During my stay at Apia I have heard much about 
things in our part of the Samoan Islands. The Tutuilans 
now consider themselves American citizens and hurrah 
for the Stars and Stripes as enthusiastically as we do on 
the Fourth of July. The government has brought quiet 
to the island, torn for years by strife among the different 
tribes. Figuratively speaking, the people are now turning 
their swords into pruning hooks. 

We are ruling the Samoans after the Dutch method; 
that is, we are working through their chiefs and allowing 
them to govern themselves. Every village is a little re¬ 
public, with its own chief, who is in most cases a hereditary 
ruler. Our naval officers, who administer the islands, sit 
behind the chiefs and pull the strings, and the people think 
they are ruling themselves. Unless inconsistent with our 
laws, native customs are never changed without the con¬ 
sent of the people. Missionary work is encouraged. 

The Island of Manua contains about twenty square 
miles. It is mountainous and surrounded by coral reefs. 
The mountains are about a half mile in height, but the 
land rises so gradually that the whole island can be culti¬ 
vated. 

The Manuans are much the same as the Tutuilans, 
except that, being out of the line of ocean steamship 
travel, they are less advanced. They have had mission¬ 
aries for the last century and are Christians. They have 
churches and schools and live peacefully under their king, 
278 


THE SAMOAS 


producing enough food for themselves and selling enough 
copra to satisfy their few other wants. Coconut and 
banana plantations are being put out on all our islands. 
The American naval officers with whom I have talked 
have nothing but good to say of the people. 

When the Americans first took possession, a party of 
officers was received in great state by the King of Manua, 
who insisted on treating them to kava before he discussed 
business. He had his chiefs with him, and the Queen sat 
beside him during the audience. The kava was brought 
in by the belle of the island in a cup fastened to a branch 
of coconut palm. It was given first to the king, who 
handed it back to her, whereupon she filled it and again 
gave it to His Majesty. After pouring some on the 
ground, he took a drink of it. It was next presented 
to the officers in the order of their rank and they had to 
drink it, although they knew of the traditional way of 
making this native beverage. 

Kava comes from a root grown in the Pacific Islands 
and by the old formula is made in the following man¬ 
ner: The kava is washed and cut up into little cubes. 
Then a young girl, preferably a pretty girl, after wash¬ 
ing her hands and rinsing her mouth, begins to work. 
She puts one cube of kava into her mouth, and chews it 
vigorously. When it is well masticated she adds another 
and another until she has in her cheeks a mass of fibre as 
big as an egg. This she takes out and lays in a large flat 
bowl and then begins to form another egg. She keeps on 
making eggs until all of the root is chewed. 1 hen water is 
poured into the bowl, and the girl begins to knead the 
fibrous mass under it. When it is strained it is a milky 
liquid that tastes for all the world like a mixture of soap- 
279 


AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH SEAS 

suds and bitters. It is not considered intoxicating, but 
when taken in excess it goes to one's knees, so that for a 
time the imbiber cannot walk straight. 

This drink is used in all the islands of the Pacific. In 
the out-of-the-way Samoas a person making kava has the 
right to ask any girl who is passing, no matter who she may 
be, to come in and chew his root for him. In most parts 
of Samoa this practice of chewing has died out, and the 
roots are now pounded up with stones instead. In the 
more remote districts, I am told the old custom prevails. 

The London Missionary Society is doing much good 
throughout all parts of Samoa. It has been working here 
for three generations and claims thousands of converts to 
Christianity. Roman Catholics also have missionaries on 
some of the islands. The Samoans are naturally religious 
and the level of their morality is far higher than that of the 
foreigners who bring in whisky and introduce the vices of 
civilization to these southern seas. There are, it is true, 
high-class business men scattered through the various ar¬ 
chipelagoes, but the average beach-combing trader is as a 
rule a curse instead of a blessing and most of the evils that 
have come to the people are due to him. 

For many of us the chief interest of the Samoas lies in 
the fact that it was near Apia that Robert Louis Stevenson 
passed the last years of his life and did much of his best 
writing. While I was there I rode up to “Vailima,” the 
big, rambling house in which he lived. Some time after his 
death the place was purchased by a wealthy German 
planter, who did all he could to dispel the Stevenson at¬ 
mosphere and soon destroyed most of the vestiges of the 
former owner's taste. He put up a sign over the gate be¬ 
ginning with Eingang verboten and going on to say in 
280 


THE SAMOAS 


English, French, and Samoan, as well as German, that 
strangers were forbidden to come inside the enclosure. 
He allowed Stevenson’s tomb to become overgrown with 
weeds, and the pilgrimages to it from the incoming ships 
became fewer every year. 

Now “Vailima” is the official residence of the adminis¬ 
trator of Western Samoa and Stevenson’s memory is kept 
much greener than it was in the days of German control. 
Once more travellers go up the steep mountain path to 
the peak of Vaea where he was buried as he had re¬ 
quested. You recall how much the Samoans loved their 
“Tusitala,” or “Teller of Tales” as they called Stevenson. 
Part of the road from Apia to “ Vailima” was laid by them 
and christened “The Road of the Loving Hearts.” At 
his funeral it was the natives who had worked with him 
who bore Stevenson’s body up the steep path to the 
mountain top, where he now lies with the Pacific at his feet. 
On his tombstone are the lines of the “Requiem” he had 
written to be inscribed there: 

Under the wide and starry sky. 

Dig the grave and let me lie. 

Glad did I live and gladly die, 

And I laid me down with a will. 

This be the verse you grave for me: 

“Here he lies where he longed to be. 

Home is the sailor, home from the sea. 

And the hunter home from the hill/* 


SEE THE WORLD 

WITH 

Frank G. Carpenter 

You can go round the world under your own living- 
room lamp by reading the travels of Frank G. Carpenter. 

Millions of Americans have already found Carpenter 
their ideal fellow traveller, and have enjoyed visiting 
with him all the corners of the globe. He tells his readers 
what they want to know, shows them what they want to 
see, and makes them feel that they are there. 

Doubleday, Page & Company, in response to the 
demand from Carpenter readers, is now publishing the 
complete story of Carpenter's World Travels, of 
which this book is the ninth in the series. Those already 
available are: 

/. “ The Holy Land and Syria ’ 

2. “From Tangier to Tripoli” 

Morocco, Algeria, 

Tunisia, and Tripoli 

3. “Alaska , Our Northern Wonderland” 

4. “ The Tail of the Hemisphere” 

Chile and Argentina 

5. “From Cairo to Kisumu” 

Egypt, The Sudan, 
and Kenya Colony 
282 


SEE THE WORLD 

6 . “Java and the East Indies ” 

Java, Sumatra, 

The Moluccas, New Guinea, 

Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula 

7. “France to Scandinavia” 

France, Belgium, 

Holland, Denmark, 

Norway, Sweden 

8 . “Mexico” 

g. “ Australia , New Zealand, and Some Islands of the 
South Seas” 

Australia, New Zealand, 

New Guinea, The Samoas, 

The Fijis and the Tongas 

Carpenter's World T ravels are the only works of their 
kind. These books are familiar talks about the countries 
and peoples of the earth, with the author on the spot and 
the reader in his home. No other one man has visited 
so much of the globe and written on the ground, in plain 
and simple language, the story of what he has found. 
Carpenter's World Travels are not the casual record 
of incidents of the journey, but the painstaking study of a 
trained observer, devoting his life to the task of inter¬ 
national reporting. Each book is complete in itself; to¬ 
gether they form the most vivid, interesting, and under¬ 
standable picture of our modern world ever published. 
They are the fruit of more than thirty years of un¬ 
paralleled success in writing for the American people, and 
the capstone of distinguished services to the teaching 
of geography in our public schools, which have used 
283 


SEE THE WORLD 

some four million copies of the Carpenter Geographical 
Readers. 

In the present state of affairs, a knowledge of nations 
and peoples is essential to an understanding of what is 
going on and of how and why all that is happening affects 
us. Carpenter takes his readers to the lands of the news 
and makes more real the daily flashes by cable and radio. 

A word to your bookseller will enable you to get the books 
of Carpenter’s World Travels already published and 
to learn how you may arrange to secure the entire series. 


284 












f 





/ 


f 




INDEX 


Aborigines, of a low order, 6; customs 
of the native blacks, 120; extermi¬ 
nated in Tasmania, 146. 

Agriculture, of great importance, in 
Australia, 4; in Tasmania, 148; in 
New Zealand, 176. 

Agricultural colleges and experimental 
farms, 117. 

Albury, building of irrigation dam 
near, 66. 

Alum, in the volcanic regions, 225. 

American goods, great sale of in 
Australia, 137; in New Zealand, 255 
et seq. 

American refrigerating machinery in 
New Zealand, 241. 

American rule in the Samoas, 278. 

American trade with the Fijis, 272. 

Americans, many settlers in Australia, 
82. 

Animals, of a strange type, 5. 

Ants, used as food by the aborigines, 
123. 

Ants, White, protection against, 29. 

Anzacs, National holiday in memory 
of the, 167. 

Apia, Samoa, made famous by the 
American-German controversy, 274. 

Apples, great production of, in Tas¬ 
mania, 147. 

Arbitration in labour disputes in New 
Zealand, 204. 

Arbitration Court, arbitrary rulings 
of, 107; New Zealand Court, 204 
et seq. 

Arcades, a feature in the business 
section of Sydney, 31. 

Art schools, state cooperation in 
establishing, 115. 

Artesian wells, the blessing of, 68; in 
the Coolgardie district, 100. 

Asiatic exclusion, the policy of, 109. 

Auckland, largest city of New Zea¬ 
land, 202. 

Australian Transcontinental, building 
of the, 91. 


Automobile, use of, in the back 
country, 48. 

Automobiles, American, Australia 
largest foreign purchaser of, 140; 
use of, in New Zealand, 238. 

Ballarat, and the gold rush, 84; the 
first Australian gold field, 95. 

Bananas, in Queensland, 14. 

Bank deposits, of New Zealanders, 
198. 

Barmaids, in Melbourne, 79; legis¬ 
lation against, in New Zealand, 
187. 

Bathing beaches, popularity of, 34. 

Baths, medicinal at Rotorua, 222. 

Bendigo gold field, great yield from, 
96. 

Birds, seven hundred varieties of, 133; 
strange, of New Zealand, 248. 

Bismarck Archipelago, now adminis¬ 
tered by Australia, 159; strange 
tribal customs on, 160. 

Bismuth, deposits of, in Queensland, 
21. 

Blue gum, durability of, 90. 

Bonds, large Queensland issue floated 
in the United States, 140. 

Bougainville, principal island of the 
Solomon group, 163. 

Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, 
12. 

British New Guinea, government of, 

8 . 

British trade, in New Zealand, 260. 

Broken Hill Silver Mines, among the 
richest in the world, 4. 

Broken Hill mining companies, pro¬ 
duction of iron and steel goods, 142. 

Bullock drivers, characters of the 
sheep country, 54. 

Burrinjuck Reservoir, of the Murrum- 
bidgee irrigation project, 67. 

Bushmen, customs of the, 120. 

Butter, exportation of, from New 
Zealand, 244. 


287 


INDEX 


Cacao, its cultivation in Samoa, 277. 

Camels, necessary in construction of 
Transcontinental railway, 92; in¬ 
valuable in Western Australia, 100. 

Canberra, the new capital of the 
Commonwealth, 8, 73. 

Cannibalism, among the aborigines, 
124; in New Guinea, 160; among 
the Maoris, 230; in the Fijis, 263, 
264. 

Canadian trade in New Zealand, 261. 

Canterbury Plains, source of the 
famed mutton, 236, 237. 

Carroll, Sir James, of Maori blood, 
234 - 

Cassowary, a bird of the forests and 
jungles, 134. 

Caterpillar, vegetable, 252. 

Cathedral of St. John, at Brisbane, 13. 

Cattle ranching in the back country, 
69. 

Cattle routes, laid out by the govern¬ 
ment, 70. 

Centennial Park, Sydney, 34. 

Chaffee brothers, start first irrigation 
project in Australia, 65. 

Charters Towers, centre of gold and 
copper district, 21. 

Cheese, exportation of, from New 
Zealand, 244. 

Christchurch, centre of sheep indus¬ 
try, 236; in the garden spot of New 
Zealand, 256. 

Civil service, applied to railway em¬ 
ployees, 87. 

Coal, abundance of, 3; mines worked 
by the government in New Zealand 
to prevent high prices, 207. 

Cockney accent, in New Zealand, 215. 

Coconut groves, in the Fijis, 270. 

Commerce of the United States with 
Australia, 137. 

Compulsory military service voted for 
in New Zealand during the war, 260. 

Conciliation and Arbitration Act, in 
New Zealand, 204. 

Constitution of the Commonwealth, 
similar to that of the United States, 
8 . 

Consular service, American, best of 
any nation, 259. 

Convicts, the first settlers, 7. 

Cook Islands, annexed by New Zea¬ 
land, 172. 

Cooking, in the hot pools, 228. 


Coolgardie, gold rush to, 98. 

Cooperative associations, of New Zea¬ 
land, 199. 

Cooperative butter and cheese facto¬ 
ries of New Zealand, 244. 

Copper, rich deposits of Queensland, 
20. 

Copra, preparation and how used, 270. 

Cricket, finest grounds in the world at 
Melbourne, 75. 

Dairy products, state aid in develop¬ 
ment of industry, 117. 

Dairying, growing importance of, in 
Australia, 4; in New Zealand, 174, 
244 - 

Dances of the Maoris, 232. 

Darling Downs, a rich agricultural 
section, 15, 29. 

Darling River, one of the most im¬ 
portant of Australia, 63. 

Department stores, of Sydney, 31; of 
Melbourne, 80. 

De Rays, Marquis, attempt to start 
the Free Colony of Oceania, 162. 

Desert lands, extent of, 4. 

Dingoes, a serious problem in the 
sheep country, 60. 

Discovery and settlement, 6. 

Distances, between Australia cities, 3; 
to other parts of the world, 6. 

Divers, pearl, Japanese the most 
efficient, 155. 

Dogs, wild, kill many shejep, 60. 

Domain, the, the gathering place of 
Sydney, 34. 

Dress, observance of, on the sheep 
stations, 47. 

Drinking, a national vice, 77. 

Droughts, the horrors of, 64. 

Duck-billed platypus, link between 
bird and beast, 131. 

Dugongs, sea-cows resembling the 
fabled mermaid, 132. 

Dunedin, a Scotch city in New Zea¬ 
land, 256. 

Earthquake Flat, in New Zealand’s 
'‘Yellowstone Park,” 220. 

Education, excellence of the public 
schools, 113. 

Eight-hour day, first established in 
Australia, 104; monument com¬ 
memorating, 104; explained by a 
government official, 111. 


288 


INDEX 


Electric power, generated at coal 
mines for use ninety miles away 
- 1 43 * 

Employees, state and federal, pro¬ 
portion to number of inhabitants, 
112. 

Emu, the national bird of Australia, 
135 - 

Eucalyptus, use of, as paving blocks, 
27; forests of, 28; remarkably dur¬ 
able for railroad ties and paving 
blocks, 90. 

Exports, extent of, from the United 
States to Australia, 137. 

Farms, smaller, movement toward, 
38; for settlement, in New Zealand, 
184; of New Zealand, 213. 

Farmhouses, the prevailing type, 28. 

Federation of the states, 7. 

Fences, rabbit, enormous extent of, 
58. 

Fencing, on the sheep ranches, 38, 39, 

41 - 

Ferns, in great variety in New Zea¬ 
land, 175, 214. 

Fiji Islands, the country and the 
people, 263. 

Fire walkers, ceremony of the, in the 
Fijis, 268. 

Flax, New Zealand, a wild product of 
the swamps, 252. 

Fodder, preservation of, for dry years, 
69. 

Foxes, introduced to combat rabbit 
plague, prove a pest, 60. 

Free Colony of Oceania, vicissitudes of 
the, 162. 

Freaks of nature, from New Zealand 
246. 

Fruit, production of, in Tasmania, 
147 - 

Fruit growing, advantages and oppor¬ 
tunities, 14. 

Gambling, a national vice, 76, 77. 

Games, New Zealanders much inter¬ 
ested in, 210. 

Gasoline, price of, in New Zealand, 
203. 

Germany’s former possessions now 
administered by Australia, 159; by 
New Zealand, 159, 172. 

Geysers, of New Zealand, 223. 

Glaciers, of New Zealand, 174. 


Godley Glacier, New Zealand, 174. 

Gold, discovery of, and amount pro¬ 
duced, 3; the Mount Morgan mine, 
Queensland, 19; the Ballarat rush, 
84, 95. 

Golden Mile, famous gold mine, 
99 - 

Government of the Commonwealth, 8. 

Government ownership, results of 
state control of railways, 87; New 
Zealand a leading exponent, 171, 
200. 

Governor of the Fijis, duties of, 269. 

Grasshoppers, used as food by the 
aborigines, 124. 

Great Barrier Reef, a chain of coral, 
10. 

Great Britain, regard for in New 
Zealand, 260. 

Griffin, Walter Burley, wins prize for 
plan of city of Canberra, 74. 

Griffin, model city in the irrigated 
district, 67. 

Gympie gold fields, 21. 

Half-holiday, compulsory in New 
Zealand, 210. 

Hargraves, discovers gold at Ballarat, 
95 - 

Harvesters, immense factory of the 
Sunshine Harvester Co., at Mel¬ 
bourne, 142. 

Hermitage, the, the government sanc¬ 
tuary of the kea parrot, 249. 

Hobart, Tasmania, one of the “farth¬ 
est south” towns of the globe, 144. 

Hoddle, auctioneer of first lots sold in 
Melbourne, 83. 

Horse racing, an enthusiasm of Aus¬ 
tralians, 49. 

Horse racing, at Melbourne, 75; in 
New Zealand, 211. 

Horses, saddle, indispensable on the 
big farms, 49. 

Hosiery, American, commands the 
Australian market, 139. 

Hot springs, at Rotorua, New Zea¬ 
land, 222. 

Hours of business in Melbourne, 82. 

House servants, scarcity of, in New 
Zealand, 191, 192. 

Houses for workmen built by the 
government in New Zealand, 209. 

Hunting, as practised by the bushmen, 
125. 


289 


INDEX 


Hydro-electric development in Tas¬ 
mania, 150; in New Zealand, 258. 

Immigration, opposition to, 110. 

Implements, American, used ex¬ 
tensively in Australia, 141. 

Industrial school near Suva, Fiji, 266. 

Insects, used as food by the aborigines, 
123. 

Insurance, issued by the government, 
in New Zealand, 197. 

Invercargill, the southernmost town, 
261. 

Iron, extensively mined, 3; deposits, in 
Queensland, 21. 

Iron and steel, growth of the indus¬ 
tries, 142. 

Irrigation, the beginning of, in Aus¬ 
tralia, 65; in New South Wales, 67. 

“Jackeroo,” meaning of the term, 49. 

Jam, exportation of, from Tasmania, 
147. 

Japanese divers, most efficient in pearl 
fisheries, 155. 

Jarrah, a remarkably durable wood, 
90. 

Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land, now ad¬ 
ministered by Australia, 159. 

Kalgoorlie, artesian wells at, 92. 

Kangaroo, the, a marsupial, 5. 

Kangaroos, of many kinds, 129. 

Karri, a remarkably durable wood, 90. 

Kauri gum, the quest for, 252. 

Kava, and the chewing process, 279. 

Kea parrot, the sheep killer of New 
Zealand, 249. 

Kimberley gold fields, 98. 

Kiwi, a strange bird of New Zealand, 
248. 

Koutu, village in volcanic region of 
New Zealand, 222. 

Labour, white men only employed in 
cane fields, 14; the powerful sheep- 
shearers’ union, 52; conditions on 
the state-owned railways, 87; wages 
and hours of work in New Zealand, 
200; hours and wages in the mutton 
refrigerating plants, 242; scarcity of 
in the Fijis, 271. 

Labour laws, protecting women work¬ 
ers in New Zealand, 188. 

Labour unions, their part in public 


affairs, 9; Australia thoroughly 
organized, 104. 

Lake Eyre, a body of salt water below 
sea level, 4. 

Land Act Bill, passage of, 17. 

Land for Settlements Act, and the 
redivision of the large holdings, 182. 

Land ownership system of New Zea¬ 
land, 178, 182. 

Land settlement in Tasmania, 149. 

Laughing jackass, or kookooburra, 
136. 

Launceston, Tasmania, to receive 
electric power from Great Lake 
plant, 151. 

Lead, deposits of, in Queensland, 21. 

Leeton, model city in the irrigated 
district, 67. 

Levuka, one of the two principal towns 
of Fiji, 268, 269. 

Libraries, state cooperation in es¬ 
tablishing, 115. 

Life insurance, issued by the govern¬ 
ment in New Zealand, 197. 

Liquor-option law, workings of, 78. 

“Living wage,” as laid down by New 
South Wales Court of Industrial 
Arbitration, 106. 

Lizard, three-eyed, of New Zealand, 
250. 

Lollipops, origin of name, 36. 

London Missionary Society, good 
work in Samoa, 280. 

Lyre bird, native of Australia, 134. 

Macarthur, Captain John, said to be 
the introducer of the prickly pear 
pest, 22; pioneer in the sheep 
industry, 45. 

Manua, one of the American Samoas, 
273* 278. 

Maoris, of advanced civilization, 171. 

Maoris, number of, in New Zealand, 
177. 

Maoris, the story of the, 227. 

Marriage customs of the Maoris, 231. 

Marsupials, preponderant in Aus¬ 
tralia, 5; many varieties, 129. 

Marsupial mouse, of New Zealand, 
250. 

McCaughey, Samuel, his fortune in 
land and sheep, 38. 

Meat-export trade of New Zealand 
controlled by a government board, 
244. 


290 


INDEX 


Melbourne, a magnificent commerce 
centre, 72; laying out of the site and 
auctioning of first lots, 83. 

Melbourne Cup Race, chief sporting 
event of the South Pacific, 76. 

Merino sheep, extra fine fleece of the, 
44; weight of fleece greatly im¬ 
proved by breeding, 51. 

Milford Track, the most beautiful 
walk in the world, 174, 175. 

Minerals, abundant in Australia, 3. 

Mining school at Ballarat, 97. 

Minting gold coins at Melbourne, 
101. 

Missionaries, success in the Fiji 
Islands, 266. 

Moa, the extinct giant bird of New 
Zealand, 246. 

Moore Park, Sydney, 34. 

Mount Bischoff tin mines in Tas¬ 
mania, largest in the world, 148. 

Mount Cook, New Zealand, the 
“cloud piercer,” 174. 

Mount Egmont, New Zealand, 173. 

Mount Leviathan, composed of pure 
iron, 21. 

Mount Lyell, Tasmania, gold, copper 
and tin production of, 148. 

Mount Morgan, richest gold mine of 
the world, 19. 

Municipal ownership, Wellington, 
New Zealand, a leading example, 
168. 

Murchison Glacier, New Zealand, 174. 

Murray-Darling, the only important 
river system in Australia, 4, 63. 

Murrumbidgee irrigation project, in 
New South Wales, 67. 

Murrumbidgee River, one of the most 
important of Australia, 63. 

Mutton, amount exported, 40; ex¬ 
portation from New Zealand, 236; 
export trade of New Zealand con¬ 
trolled by a government board, 244. 

Nails, not used in Samoan dwellings, 
275 - 

National Park, near Sydney, 34. 

National Provident Fund, a New 
Zealand institution, 199. 

New Britain, of the Bismarck Archi¬ 
pelago, 161. 

New Guinea, former German territory 
now administered by Australia, 159, 
160. 


New Ireland, of the Bismarck Archi¬ 
pelago, 161. 

New Plymouth, New Zealand, in the 
dairy district, 174. 

New South Wales, size, and wealth of 
its people, 24. 

New Zealand, location, and physical 
geography, 170 et seq.; form of 
government, 171; climate, 173; 
population, and proportion of 
aborigines, 177; early colonization 
movements, 179. 

New Zealand Loan and Mercantile 
Company, a cooperative associ¬ 
ation, 199. 

Newspapers and their circulation, 118. 

Ngauruhoe, volcano in New Zealand, 
* 73 - 

Nuggets, remarkable, found in the 
Ballarat gold field, 96. 

Nukualofa, capital and only town of 
the Tonga Islands, 272. 

Nullarbor Plain, difficulties in building 
railway over, 91. 

Oats, high yield in New Zealand, 176. 

Old-age pensions, in New Zealand, 
194 - 

Opals, in Queensland, 21; quantities 
offered for sale, 81. 

Organs, pipe, rivalry between Mel¬ 
bourne and Sydney, 32, 74. 

Owls, the solution of the pest of 
birds in fruit region, 257. 

Papua, government of, 8; adminis¬ 
tered by Australia, 159, 160. 

Parliament of the Commonwealth, 
organization of, 8. 

Pasteur, fails in production of virus to 
combat rabbit plague, 59. 

Phillip, Captain, brings first sheep to 
Australia, 45. 

Pearl fisheries, at Thursday Island, 
152. 

Pearl shell, the commerce in, 154. 

Pelicans, common in Queensland, 
132. 

“Pelorus Jack,” the pet whale, 251. 

Pensions, old age, in New Zealand, 
194. 

Pineapples, produced extensively in 
Queensland, 14. 

Pipe line water supply in Coolgardie 
district, 100. 


29I 


INDEX 


Pipe organs, rivalry in, of Melbourne 
and Sydney, 32, 74. 

Platypus, strangest of the animal 
kingdom, 5; link between bird and 
beast, 131. 

Plug tobacco used as money in New 
Guinea, 138. 

Poisoning, of rabbits, 57; of dingoes 
and foxes, 60. 

Port Arthur, old convict colony of 
Van Diemen’s Land, 145. 

Postal savings banks, in New Zea¬ 
land, 198. 

Poverty, almost unknown in New 
Zealand, 194, 198. 

Prickly Pear, its fateful introduction 
in Queensland, 22. 

Prickly-Pear Commission, in search of 
means to destroy the pest, 22. 

Prohibition, in New Zealand, 187. 

Prosperity, in New Zealand, 255. 

Public debt, huge, of New Zealand, 
202. 

Public schools, excellence of, 113. 

Public Trust, a government institution 
of New Zealand, 199. 

Purchasing power of the Australian 
people, 138. 

“Queen Emma” of New Guinea, 162. 

Queensland, size and location, 13; 
population, 16; travels in, 10. 

Rabaul, principal European colony in 
Bismarck Archipelago, 161. 

Rabbits, the plague, and efforts to 
combat it, 56; exportation of frozen 
carcasses, 59; a serious pest also 
in New Zealand, 240; freezing in 
New Zealand for export, 257. 

Rabbit skins, exportation of, Aus¬ 
tralian, 59; New Zealand, 240. 

Railway fares, in New Zealand, 218. 

Railway ties, durable woods used, 90. 

Railway travel, 28. 

Railways, owned by the different 
states, each of different gauge of 
track, 85; total amount of trackage, 
86 . 

Railways of New Zealand, travelling 
over the, 213; government owned, 
214. 

Rainfall, scarcity of, in Australia, 62. 

Ratu Epele Nailatikau, high chief of 
the Fijis, 265. 


Refrigeration and shipment of New 
Zealand mutton, 237, 240. 

Religious belief of the bushmen, 126. 

Reptiles, used as food by the aborigi¬ 
nes, 123. 

Rimutaka Mountain, New Zealand, 
steepest railway grade in the world, 
216. 

Rockhampton, city of gold and cop¬ 
per, 19, 20. 

Rotorua, most famous health resort of 
the South Seas, 222. 

Ruapehu volcano, in New Zealand, 
173 . 

Salote, Queen of the Tongas, 272. 

Samoa, German, now administered by 
New Zealand, 159, 172. 

Samoas, the islands and the people, 
273 el seq. 

Sapphires, from Queensland, 22. 

Satin-bower bird, and its habits, 134. 

Sausage casings, amount exported, 40. 

Savaii, volcanic island of the Samoan 
group, 273, 274. 

Schools, travelling, in New South 
Wales, 114. 

Seddon, Richard, New Zealand's 
greatest premier, 181. 

Sharks, danger from in diving for pearl 
shell, 156. 

Sheep, Australia the largest producer, 
40; fine breeding stock produced in 
Tasmania, 148. 

Sheep, blooded, great demand for, 41. 

Sheep industry, importance of, 4, 37. 

Sheep raising, New Zealand’s chief 
industry, 184, 236 et seq. 

Sheep ranches, immensity of the, 38, 
41 - 

Sheep shearing, how conducted, 52; 
in New Zealand, 239. 

Sheep shearers, the aristocrats of the 
sheep business, 51. 

Sheep show, annual, at Sydney, 40. 

Sheep stations, social life on the, 47. 

Sheepskins, annual exportation, 40. 

Shoes, American, in New Zealand, 259. 

Signs, curious to an American, 81. 

Silver, great deposits of, 4; great out¬ 
put of the Broken Hill field, 142. 

Slang, Australian, 81. 

Slaughtering, and refrigerating of 
mutton for export, 241. 

Sleeping cars, in New Zealand, 217. 


292 


INDEX 


Social legislation. New Zealand first in 
many laws, 194. 

Solomon Islands, the natives and the 
products, 163. 

South Pacific Ocean, wild and stormy, 
165. 

Sports, New Zealanders’ devotion to, 
210. 

Squatters, meaning of the term, 39. 

Squid, danger from in pearl fishing, 
157 . 

State-owned railways, the, 85. 

States, comprising the Common¬ 
wealth, 7. 

Steel, manufacture of, a growing 
industry, 142. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, his villa at 
Apia, Samoa, 274, 280, 281, not 
a successful planter, 277. 

Stores and business of Melbourne, 
80. 

Street cars, municipally owned in 
Auckland, 203. 

Strikes, rare in New Zealand, 204. 

Sugar cane, extensively grown with 
white labour, 14. 

Sugar plantations in the Fijis, 270. 

“Sun-downer,” the tramp of the sheep 
country, 54. 

Suva, capital of the Fijis, 268, 269. 

Swans, black, of New Zealand, 250. 

Sydney, metropolis of the Antipodes, 
24; its shipping and fine harbour, 25; 
walks about the city, 31. 

Sydney Bulletin, widely read news¬ 
paper, 33, 47. 

Tarawera, Mount, eruption of, 220. 

Tariff, protective, to foster home 
industries, 141, 143. 

Tariff, preferential, with Great Bri¬ 
tain, 143. 

Taronga Park, cageless zoological 
gardens, 34. 

Tasman Glacier, New Zealand, 174. 

Tasmania, the Switzerland of the 
southern Pacific, 144. 

Tattooing, among the Maoris, 229. 

Taupo, largest lake in New Zealand, 
^ 75 - 

Taxation system of New Zealand, 179. 

Te Anau, second largest lake in New 
Zealand, 175. 

Tea, great amount used by Aus¬ 
tralians, 112. 


Technical schools, in many cities, 116. 

Thakombau, last king of the Fijis, 264. 

“Three Eights” monument at Mel¬ 
bourne, 105. 

Thursday Island, the centre of the 
pearl-fishing industry, 152. 

Tikitere, the “hell” of New Zealand’s 
volcanic region, 225. 

Tin, extensively mined, 3; deposits of, 
in Queensland, 21; Mount Bischoff 
mines in Tasmania the largest pro¬ 
ducers in the world, 148. 

Tonga Islands, the country and the 
people, 263, 272. 

Toorak, residential suburb of Mel¬ 
bourne, 73. 

Toowoomba, principal city of the 
Darling Downs district, 15. 

Topography of Australia, 4. 

Torrens Title, system of land transfer, 
16. 

Trackers, remarkable keenness of the 
bushmen as, 125. 

Trade schools, in every large city, 116. 

Travelling schools, in New South 
Wales, 114. 

Turnips, production of, in Tasmania, 
148; as feed for sheep, in New Zea¬ 
land, 213, 238. 

Tutuila, one of the American Samoas, 

273. 

Tyson, James, wealthy stockman, 37. 

Unions, encouraged in New Zealand, 
204. 

Unionism, Australia thoroughly 
organized, 104. 

“Universal providers” the Melbourne 
department stores, 80. 

Universities and higher education, 
116. 

Upolu, an island of the Samoas, 273, 

274, 275. 

Victoria, irrigation projects in, 67/ 

Volcanoes, of New Zealand, 173, 220. 

Voting, compulsory, in New Zealand, 
186. } 

Voyage to Australia, the, 1. 

Wages, on the sheep ranches, 39. 

Waikato River, largest in New Zea¬ 
land, 213. 

Waimangu Geyser, New Zealand, 224. 

Wallaby, a species of Kangaroo, 131. 


293 


INDEX 


Water, scarcity of, in Australia, 63. 

Water supply in the dry lands, 

66 . 

Wealth, in Sydney, 24; of the Aus¬ 
tralian people, 138. 

Wellington, New Zealand, the capital 
city, 167. 

Wells, artesian, furnish water in the 
desert, 92. 

Whale, “Pelorus Jack,” the pet of 
New Zealand, 251. 

Wheat, immense production and ex¬ 
port of, 4; transportation and care 
awaiting exportation, 90; pro¬ 
duction of, in Tasmania, 148; high 
yield in New Zealand, 176. 

White Island, New Zealand, a bed of 
hot sulphur, 173. 

White men, a country for, 104. 

Williams, U. S. Consul to Fiji, his part 
in the transfer of the islands to the 
British, 264. 

Wimmera-Mallee irrigation system, 
the, 66. 

Wool, immense production, and of 
fine quality, 4; annual production, 


40; how handled and sold at Sydney, 
the chief wool market, 42; prices 
attained, 43; the science of grading, 
44; handling of the crop, 53; weight 
of fleece of the different breeds of 
sheep, 240; handling the clip of 
New Zealand, 243. 

Woollen mills, of New Zealand, 243. 

Woman suffrage, adds strength to 
labour element, 9; in New Zealand, 
186. 

Women, in politics and labour, in New 
Zealand, 186. 

Women divers in the pearl fisheries, 
157 - 

Workmen’s houses, built by the 
government, in New Zealand, 209. 

Yates, Mrs., the first woman mayor, 
186. 

“Yellowstone Park” of New Zealand, 
220. 

Zinc, works of the Electrolytic Zinc 
Corporation in Tasmania the larg¬ 
est of the kind in the world, 150. 


294 


279 85 








































































> 






























































































































































































































































































































































- 



































































































































































































































































































































































































A v-* ; 







a' <u *<'vr* % ' ,o v * 

<»* ry 





* ** r$ 


c v ♦ 



^ *" 1 * A 

* 1 *®- %> v * s ° * 

^ ^ ^ A f % 

: W ; 

/ c ° 



ava. . 

* <4* ^ v 

<V <V?V,* <0 

-. *<• c° , 






O 0 % A o \ 

% o n o .o #. ** n A % 

'* cv <0 * < • °* *> V" s*VL'* c\ 

• ■$> ,C* ‘jfCdfA” ^ ** * 


* ^ ^ °o 

*. ' " s ‘ />'■ t ,, "%. '••**' ' <» .6* *o 





V r v » * 5 

A 0 ° w ® * <5> 

^ C* 4 ^V^XV . ^ *P 


0*1 


A °^ * 

-a , y & 

K* ^ « 

r o 


4°v. * 



*2* 


O M 0 


>. V* 

• ^ „<£ * 

r ^ V* •, 

r «* & %• •. 

'“•** .A <b *' 7 V.‘ .0 

V4 0 0 M ° ■» "<2jy tv • 1 ' fl 

> VS W” * rS55XV tt/* ^ A* v* 



•*o ’ ,4> 

* ^ - *jj wi/a/*: ° ^ * 

*. +A<j« -llff^: w :« 

/ S',’ 4°^ - 

. ■ • ■ A> '"b- * ° “ ° ° A? ^t!> 

A V ,*L!oL> ^ .9^ *’••» > 

• ^ A ♦Vgjfe'. V Jjk^A.% < 



* <£ % °o 

' y *~. * 




•"bt? 



4°'% ’. 

4° ^ "’* A> 

♦ J &%&/£* ^ 

*v C ^ 4 

^0< :mb?' • 

K* 1 ^ ^ ^ 

^ „„ ^ 
cx .o v ^ 8 ^ 

' 



** q? ■>*- <"J^ * 


o V 


♦ / o ^o ^ 

^ * * 0 



* # 


<* 

<A */> v 

^ 0 *<§ 
> ^5 

f. fW Vih O. 

U ^o. * a i n * <X’’ O 




’; ' 5 o .°«5 

o ^0 -^t P > ^ 

’■ ^0° ^ * 


, V % *l^r* <%, <!>* .•••» <?• 

^ • %■ <?* 

. i\4'' ; V -* «> A■* 

/ 4>y ^ vS3!Sr * v V/ o vJs^AF * rtf ^ 

^OoA- A *f vf. 5 4 '/ ^ *~o 9 *** A A 

A^ » c \L° ^ ,0^ t « L ' s ^b A^ v o oN 0 * **S> A 




4 » ’T’ 


^-o 5 


s 9,. 




^ V o_ ^ 


’ ^ ^ > - 

° aP^ * B ' 1 * A* ~o 

V V ^ <0^ *y°* **> <V ^ s " ’ 

\ 4? /aWc* ^ .A 

^ c>~ « 

• ^ '.®w> aV-^ :' 



% iffi ~*o*^*' A 

C° ♦WfeT. °o ^ , 





0 « 


A^’ n »= *' 

< v c 0 W 0 ^ <^ . 

i> « __jASN\ ^ *P > 

u> t, Vj ^ 

w v P> 4 ^ 

* ^ cr 


0 o 

* <? V, o 

v K» * 



^ At 

^>w ^ 0^ 


4.0 ♦ 

*t •0L > v^v v) 

^ K? _ *A 

^ -a.r O 





















o 

o 





> 

°o 


'°• * * * A ' 

A „ 0 » o » ^ 
,J> 0 ^ ~ * 


J> 0 % \ 

^ V, *«<’* ^ 









<* A* <r 

°. W ; 

*° A* ^ ° 0 

' «^ *'*VA A 

G 0 ^ *’*srx £-r ^ >C b 

** 0 * 

4 O a • 

A <v % 

/ °-#. * 


, - <-. *-Tr«* .o* 

.A o 0 W ° •* '^A. 

VN % <?<N\W%, * T 

- *% V* ,° 

® 

• ,0° v *•■'• .# 

f)‘ f t*o, ^ A 

* 






* * v *v 



«A 0 ° N ° * 


° ^ A * 

°. "A » 

- A ^ o 

» 47 V. c 

A 

~ * A 

A> »'•’'»* O A V ; 

(*, J'no/YlTr^ * O * 

-. •<?, « 0 **_ ^ '' 



<0 v*> > ^ 

* ^ v 
<*. 





*. ”W '’ov 4 ,° 

*9./*??■>*' a ^ ■’*»«•’■ y %. -• 11 ■ 

/ vii •'* c\ .9 * ’ •« 

^ 1 «s* a ^ ^r>. xiV 0 

° ^-* aV * * ^V* ^ v' * 






4 O 
<C V 

* / %' 
s ® * /■ . £> 


a 


- - i ’ ,.0 


o. *oV» * A 




HOy. 



© 

A V * 

♦ 4? ° 

' y t • 

A'* .v.., * 0 

c° *V^% ° vl 

. £»flS<>* ,5 o ^ .° 

o A V* »■ 




* ^ ^ ° 







A^ r 0 o«^ ^ ' "" A % 

0« , v V M?(1i///72^ -% 4 \ % 

”. 'gjim^- '*°& °« 

‘. Vo ’* 0° °o '*A^* -'°° ^ 

*•■ A .v“- > ^ y '' 

\ %A • 

; ^ V ^ v \ *. 

► -'o»* * A <\ A ^/. * * * 

^ A o°^°^ ^ .0^ V ^ c v ^ 


\V^* j 
# ^ % 




' %./ - ’ 




j- 0 ^ * 






*5 ** 





A u5°^ -i 

* . lA ^ ^ 


0 

, 2"° "* 

rv 0 ri, *'TWT < *'f 4? cv 

^ *.T.*’A % A \ *..,• / «Jfc 

A'JV oWm®' ^V Vy V “‘^3^° 

* ^ a 4 

A> A) *'« - ■ * A 

< 5 > " - A . V » fi 

^ .X «. •» 


o Cl 




°’ 4 'A'^o-,;V' 



cy 'vP-v ° 4 
^ «y hu 0 


» 0 



mE cKM aN 


o V 


> 0 ^ 


%gss^ 




i • A> V s 

^ g y < A v ^ 
A, <• ^ 

o o 

?! c ^ ! 


s • .o v ^ '•. * 

•f ,o^ ,c^< ^o 0 ^ 

3-0’ ° 

o A v\ *■ 

' . ^ 4 

* ,0 

♦ 1*®^ %? 

9 

o 



°+ *““ 0 ’ ^° 
4? * 















































































































































































